The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.
Franklin P. Jones
Franklin P. Jones
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
Permanent corporate tax breaks? NYT
Is George not satisfied with his progress in bankrupting the United States so far?
BushCo, and especially the Grover Norquist, “Mammon worshipping” sect within BushCo, are looters, pure and simple. Their pathology is such that they’ll never be satisified, no matter how much of the treasury they divert into their own pockets. They are the lowest6 form of thieves.
At least we still have money for Hallibur…I mean, a strong military: AP/Yahoo
plus $120b for wars, closing in on half a trillion and counting. Only S18b (bringing to $100 billion) for Katrina. Heard on NPR, no transcript yet, GOP leadership in Miss have been very successful prying loose the money as opposed to Dems in Nola.
Let me ask a silly. Is that why Landrieu keeps crossing the aisle?
No surprise here, we know the priorities. Mid-terms, we’ll put in our verdict.
Yeah, Mr. “Culture of Life” Preznit has plenty of money to spend on killing people abroad, but none for healthcare, housing, or education of the people at home. Go figure.
Not to be overlooked, the honey-money pot is working out very well for prez and his vice.
Among the reasons Landrieu keeps crossing the aisle is that she is in a very conservative state.
And think about it. . .after Katrina, a goodly portion of her Democratic base is no longer there. Atomized. The MSM is talking about NOLA having a white mayor again for the first time in many many years.
Whatever the LA repubs’ dissatisfaction with the Katrina response – and it is considerable – does anyone think that that they will turn to supporting their Democratic Senator MORE as a result? I don’t think so.
We’re way behind the original administration program of weaponizing the universe.
Yes! But the Bush regime has made great advances in the art of weaponizing ignorance here on Earth.
And they are working hard to ensure that ignorance with the cutting of funding to the poor, the elderly, and education.
Gee, I can’t wait… BBC
What were they thinking?
People wash their jeans? Who knew.
but do they wash their speedos?
Arf.
woof
I always thought you just bought a pair and then threw them out. Oh the joys of being a multi-billionaire.
I think washing them must be an east coast thing. They probably get them dry cleaned.
What a novel idea. It’s amazing what the little people do.
Full Article
The new budget makes cuts that will hurt women and children, especially those who have the least resources.
As ususal, the Republicans concern for the sanctity of life doesn’t extend to those who actually breathing on their own as the cut health care and made welfare more onerous for women with children.
All of it sucks, but this part just makes my skin crawl…”They also faulted lawmakers for failing to adequately fund child-care programs but spending money on untested marriage promotion programs.”
Back to the 50’s, girls.
This goes back to the comment I made the other day that these people look at studies that show that children in families with two parents do better than single mother families and interpret the data to mean that all problems can fixed by just putting a daddy in the picture, which of course appeals to the right since it is 1) it makes men the solution and women the problem, 2) it’s a mindless fix, and 3) it lets them make moral judgments.
It also lets them off the hook, (in their own minds), for any culpability they might have as a result of being active recipients of largess in a social economy that requires a certain percentage of poverty in order to sustain that largess.
Acknowledging responsibiity toward others for benefiting at their expense is to be avoided at all costs.
Our local governments in the Twin Cities area have calculated the loss of one program that’s been cut in Medicaid that funds child protection services. The county that St. Paul is in will loose $8 million for these purposes and the county that Minneapolis is in will loose $22 million. We’re in the process of bracing for what these cuts will mean to abused kids in our area.
I don’t even know what to write about all of this – its just overwhelming in its mindlessness and cruelty. This is going to sound crass, but just remember this moment when you hear people outraged about abused kids being killed because of lack of protection. IT WILL NOT BE THE FAULT OF THE POORLY PAID STAFF WHO TRY THEIR BEST TO DO THIS JOB!! Its the f’ing Republicans who care more about war and embryos than they do about abused children.
And I want every progressive politician to challenge every right-wing politician who proposes anti-abortion legislation because they say they believe in the sanctity of life to put up or shut up — to ask where is accompanying by legislation that provides funding for health care and social services for pregnant women and actually breathing children. And if they won’t, brand them a flaming hypocrites that they are.
.
CAIRO (CBS/AP) Feb. 3 — An Egyptian passenger ship carrying 1,300 people has sunk in the Red Sea, the head of the Egyptian Maritime Authority said Friday.
Mahfouz Taha Marzouk said the ship, “Salaam 98,” sank 40 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada, and that 15 bodies and 12 survivors have been found so far.
al-Salam Boccaccio 98The cause was not immediately known, but there were high winds and a sandstorm overnight on Saudi Arabia’s west coast, from which the ship departed Thursday evening.
Egyptian maritime officials say helicopters spotted one lifeboat with only three survivors; they also saw bodies floating on the sea, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.
Saudi and Egyptian rescue ships and helicopters are in the area looking for survivors, but bad weather is hampering the effort, reports CBS News correspondent David Hawkins.
Britain’s top naval officer said he has diverted a warship to the north Red Sea site where an Egyptian passenger ship has sunk.
Al Jazeera — The ferry disappeared shortly after leaving the port of Duba in Saudi Arabia on Thursday evening, bound for Safaga in southern Egypt. It was last recorded to be 100km from Duba.
Most of the passengers are thought to be Egyptians working in Saudi Arabia but some reports say the ship also carried pilgrims returning from the holy city of Mecca after the annual pilgrimage, or Hajj.
The 6,650-tonne al-Salam Boccaccio 98 is owned by the Egyptian company, el-Salam Maritime Transport.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
What a terrible and sad story. I was in Sweden for work when the ferry Estonia sank and being there really made me understand the horror of this kind of event — where something everyday and normal becomes the means of mass death.
and hardly gets a mention here unless there were Americans onboard.
NPR’s Morning Edition did just do a story on it.
An aside: since I wasn’t at home for the Estonia sinking, I’ve never thought about the coverage here. It was non-stop in Sweden and so to me, it’s always been a “big story.”
I read it this morning on AOL and have switched back and forth between CNN and GMA and heard one little mention on CNN…about 20 seconds worth.
It’s currently the front page title story on MSNBC.
Prayers for the victims and their families and friends, and that more survivors be found. The number of lives that will be affected by this is mind-boggling.
.
I’m afraid the catastrophe will be complete with over 1,000 victims!
Saudi – Egyptian Search and Rescue
Up to 1,400 passengers on board – 20 survivors picked up, however dozens of bodies recovered from the sea.
Darkness will limit further rescue within a few hours.
SHIPPING DISASTERS“British Navy fregate will participate in the rescue operation” … now it’s clear the vessel is one day travel from disaster area.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
From yesterday’s NYT:
I should be inured to this sort of thing by now, but the brazenness of the kleptocracy still continues to shock me for some reason.
The article barely made it on to the most emailed list . . . Ho hum. Millions and billions being ripped off on “reconstruction projects” in Iraq, but our budget’s so tight we have to cut funds for student loans and poor people’s health care.
Michael Moore is looking for people who have had huge problems getting the medical care they need for their families- and I wanted to let her know in case she’s interested. It would be hugely appropriate to highlight the military families dilemmas.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
She was around yesterday in various places, including the News Bucket so there’s a pretty chance she’ll see this but if I “run” into somewhere else, I’ll point her to your post.
Thank you for that, I will go check it out….still surprises me to this day how much I had to fight for my son while my husband was “fighting for us”.
Sorry I’m late to the party –
my boss dropped by my cube, LOL!
Several articles on the treacherous intersection of science and politics today…
Republican War on Science – Outrage du Jour:
Agriculture Department officials overruled field scientists’ recommendation to retest an animal that was suspected of harboring mad cow disease last year because they feared a positive finding would undermine confidence in the agency’s testing procedures, the department’s inspector general said yesterday. After protests from the inspector general, the specimen was sent to England for retesting and produced the nation’s second confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.
Good for what bugs you:
We often hear of scientists going to the Amazon or other exotic locations to learn from native people about botanical cures for diseases, insect repellents, etc. But sometimes what you seek may be right at home: According to a botanist in the ARS — Southern Weed Science Research Unit at Stoneville, Miss., it was known among folks in northeastern Mississippi during the early 20th century that placing the crushed leaves of American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, under an animal’s harness would mash out a repellant oil. Eventually, some people there started mashing the leaves and rubbing the residue on their own skins. It works well enough in lab tests that the active ingredient has been isolated and patented; toxicity testing is underway.
From the “Ain’t that Sumpthin'” Department:
Scientists have long wondered why animal live evolved relatively late in the history of earth. The answer, it turns out, may be due to clay. As the land surface was colonized by the first primitive organisms (perhaps fungi?) these life forms changed the way the land surface eroded, generating clay that washed to the sea. The clay carried organic matter bound to it to the bottom of the ocean. As this organic matter was removed from circulation, a corresponding amount of oxygen was freed to the atmosphere, eventually reaching levels that could support multicellular animal life.
From Grist.com (Worth going to daily if only for the eco-snark):
Nothing to see here, move along, move along:
The Republican chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee will introduce legislation this spring aimed at fighting global warming, but their staff see little chance of Congress passing the climate change bill this year. Sen. Pete Domenici, who chairs the Senate’s energy committee, believes the United States should take a tougher stand than the Bush administration has to date. Domenici and his Democratic colleague on the panel, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, jointly issued a “white paper” Thursday listing climate change issues that must be resolved before they can write their bill. The paper seeks answers to several key questions, including whether the entire U.S. economy or just certain sectors should be regulated in any greenhouse gas program. Related story
…Guess they think they’ll have better luck than John McCain and Joementum getting climate change legislation passed…
“But Who Will Watch the Watchers?” du Jour:
An FBI-led watchdog agency has opened an investigation into multiple complaints accusing NASA Inspector General Robert W. Cobb of failing to investigate safety violations and retaliating against whistle-blowers. Most of the complaints were filed by current and former employees of his own office.
“If the environment is not protected, how can people exist?” – Chinese environmental activist
Reuters has a look today at the ticking time bomb of environmentally-motivated unrest in China.
Got Water?
If you think oil wars are bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet – wait `til we’re fighting over water. The skirmishes have begun.
Doesn’t your boss know we’re sitting here waiting for your latest enviro/science news? sheesh.
A longer version available here. No indication it was terrorists or the Bush administration, but I’d just bet we hear about this in the future as yet another reason we need to be afraid and have W (short for the Watcher) watchin’ over us… It could have been terrorists, after all…
From my MD Consult subscription (article behind the wall):
One easy way to increase your melatonin levels is to sleep without any lights on at night.
This has been your public health service/trivia announcement for the day…
is more melatonin. Most people with SAD produce large quantities of Melatonin in the winter time. It must be true that it also slows aging because nobody believes that I am forty, sadly I am usually asleep though and can’t stay for the debate to convince them all. One time my blood pressure was so low my doctor asked me if I was a corpse and cracked his own self up, I was too sleepy to find the humor.
In your case, maybe you should sleep with the lights on, then. Sorry!
I drove my dad and my grandparents crazy by sleeping with my bedroom light on in the winter. I couldn’t explain to them that I felt better and could get up in the mornings.
First you laugh, then you scream. Or is it first you scream, then you laugh? Guess it depends on whether you think they’re headed for the “dustbin of history” yet or not…
I wonder if Rumsfeld has any mirrors in his house. Probably not, else he might be able to see his own image as more in sync with the Hitlerian rubric.
Actually though, as is probably true with most of the rest of the vampire-like Cheney/neocon, gang, his image, like theirs, wouldn’t be reflected in mirrors anyway.
[snip]
Two of the Americans already arrested, Lt. Col. Debra Harrison and Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, are senior Army reserve officers. The court papers indicate that the remaining unnamed co-conspirators are also Army reserve officers, for a total of at least five officers involved. But the papers suggest that others, identified only by opaque designations like “person H,” may also have been involved in one way or another.
Yup, brings new meaning to “Be all that you can be… in the Army Reserve”.
link
The mineral content of milk and popular meats has fallen significantly in the past 60 years, according to a new analysis of government records of the chemical composition of everyday food.
[snip]
The levels of iron recorded in the average rump steak have dropped by 55%, while magnesium fell by 7%. Looking at 15 different meat items, the analysis found that the iron content had fallen on average by 47%. The iron content of milk had dropped by more than 60%, and by more than 50% for cream and eight different cheeses. Milk appears to have lost 2% of its calcium, and 21% of its magnesium too.
[snip]
“Minerals are easy to detect and measure and have been since the 19th century. It is almost impossible that methods have changed so much that it would explain the huge difference between these figures,” the Food Commission’s director, Dr Tim Lobstein, said. “One of the key arguments is that today’s agriculture does not allow the soil to enrich itself, but depends on chemical fertilisers that don’t replace the wide variety of nutrients plants and humans need.”
link
garden this year. Just got home with tomato plants
I have all the rotted horse manure you can carry… it’s really good shit!!!
Hey Knoxville, can we tell your boss that you’re needed here?
This from Raw Story that I haven’t seen posted at the Pond yet. If it has, it’s still fun to see again. 🙂
My fellow traditional musicians and I back in our midwest town always had tough relations with organizers of folk festivals in the area once world music became media phenomena, and promoters & organizers moved in from outside trad circles to create splashy events.
Often years would go by without any prominent locals performing at their local festivals, even for freebie demonstrations, despite being on regional or even national circuits playing at other festivals, doing recording work and working as dance musicians.
Sort of the folk music version of the rebuilding of Iraq and New Orleans.
Today CNN is reporting that the Super Bowl entertainment had been slated to use ZERO Detroit performers. After some behind the scenes protesting, Aretha Franklin gets to sing the anthem, and Stevie Wonder will do a couple of minutes some time before the game.
This news from Maryland is a mixed bag for me.
On the one hand, it’s always good to see a bigoted bill get smacked down, and I’m stoked to see Democrats fighting, well, for anything in any way, really.
On another hand, I think this civil union business is ludicrous. Marriage is already defined as a civil union in the US. That is what it is: a civil contract. Church marriages are your own business, not the government’s, and that’s exactly how it should be. The only contract the government cares about is the civil contract. And spending millions more dollars and countless hours of lege time crafting new types of civil contracts and then arguing over the precise ways in which these contracts between gays should be legislated differently than those between straights is flatout one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. It is a massive waste of time and money. But bigotry is stupid by definition, and I guess this is just what stupid does.
This shit in Florida scares me, though.
This scares me because I fear that the next round of gay-bashing laws is going to include this issue in the form of those so-called “conscience clauses” in the medical world, where the wingnuts are on the move trying to make sure that their discriminatory behavior is statutorily protected. As well as wanting the right to harass and bully women over reproductive choices, along with trying to get away with refusing emergency medical treatment like Plan B by calling it something else like “personal morality”, they also want the right to refuse to provide medical treatment to gays. (In most places, their right to bully and harass us is secure because not very many people think queers should be a protected category in hate crime laws or civil rights laws.)
Am I wrong that the difference between marriage and civil unions is that neither the feds nor any other state has to pay a bit of attention to civil unions?
I’m not savvy enough about the nuances of the legislation to know if those are the only differences, but yes, they were the primary differences that many queer folks were concerned about. No “civil union” needs be treated as equivalent to a “marriage” anywhere because they are crafted as separate contracts under the law, and we know from experience that separate ain’t equal.
But to complicate things, this has also become the case for same sex marriage in general, due to DOMA laws. Forget about civil unions for a second, the federal DOMA means that the feds don’t recognize any marriage between folks of the same sex, and it also means that no other state has to recognize such a marriage and that states are free to make their own DOMAs, which many have. Thus, a Massachusetts marriage between same sexed individuals is, for all practical purposes, only legal right now in Massachusetts. It’s not portable (due to DOMA laws), and the people in such a marriage still have to file their federal 1040s as though they are single, are still not eligible for federal spousal benefits, and presumably only enjoy legal protections such as privileged spousal communications if they are involved in an in-state legal matter.
To cut through all the bullshit, “civil unions” were, at the outset, primarily a way of making it very easy and convenient to continue to legislate fewer rights to gay families than to straight families. Sadly however, it’s turning out to be also true that legislatures are so far finding it extremely easy to pass laws that achieve basically the same effect re: same sex marriages, so while it seemed clear enough from the start that this was all about the bigotry, now the writing is on the wall in capital red letters.
scared or intimidated or freaked out by gays marrying. I just can’t seem to honestly figure it out. Marriage has some legal bonuses but getting your credit tied to somebody else no matter what their gender isn’t always a great thing. My father was a hetro married and divorced five times who went to great pains proving to everybody who knew him that other than the legalities marriage doesn’t mean shit if the married don’t want it to. I know so many hetro marriages that are nothing but shams…..why would they give a shit if gay people got married also?
It’s the same reason why we haven’t had a female President yet. People are generally bigoted and stupid, yet they generally believe that they are wise and fair, so their bigoted stupidity marches on unchecked.
The Maryland action is doubtless due to the fact that a judge in MD just threw out the gay marriage ban law already on the books as unconstitutional… so of course, now the conservatives want to change the constitution.
There are times I want to pick people up and shake them. It’s not as though allowing same-sex marriage would change anything about the opposite-sex marriages that already exist or will occur (or dissolve) in the future… the only real effect it would have is on same-sex couples and their families, for whom it would represent a significant benefit, while harming no one.
We’ll keep plugging. The Maryland legislature has been pretty progressive lately, and the Democrats control both houses.
The Maryland action is doubtless due to the fact that a judge in MD just threw out the gay marriage ban law already on the books as unconstitutional… so of course, now the conservatives want to change the constitution.
Yes, that’s another reason why it was a mixed bag for me. That has pretty much been the national strategy.
To begin with, gays were being shut down by courts on pure bigotry, so we just fought against that. Eventually, enough people realized that bigotry against gays is no more acceptable than bigotry against any other group, and that’s when we started to win cases on the actual merits. At which point the anti-gay forces realized that simple cultural bigotry was no longer enough to categorically exclude gays from having the same constitutional rights as everyone else has, so their strategy became to change constitutions so that anti-gay bigotry, rather than gay Americans, is what gets constitutional protection. It is astonishing to me that anyone with a conscience still thinks this is in any way even marginally acceptable for a fucking nanosecond.
But I really appreciate the passion and outrage of folks like you, JanetT. Just knowing that I have any allies at all in this fight is a big part of what keeps me going on some of the darker days. And then of course the images of all of those beautiful, grateful, loving people who were so overjoyed to get married in Massachusetts 2 years ago (it will be 2 years on Feb 12, I believe).
Boehner re-affirms the GOP culture of corruption.
For those wishing a primer on the New GOP Majority Leader at work and at play. So much for reform.
link here
.http://www.publicampaign.org/leadership/boehner_facts.htm
This just in, via The Nation:
That is scary; I just saw it too but you beat me to the punch posting it.
I think it’s going to be a very tight contest to see which book turns out to be non-fiction first — The Handmaid’s Tale or 1984.
The US continues to lag behind the rest of the ‘civilized world’ in terms of executing the mentally ill, as it continues to try to speed up the pace of executions:
Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is a provision of the Patriot Act that would make it more difficult for defendants to have their habeas appeals heard in Federal court. Lawmakers love to put death penalty legistation into anti-terrorism bills; Clinton started this with “Anti-terrorism & Effective Death Penalty Act” of 1996, which is the source of much confusion in habeas litigation today.
What this provisoin means is that the Attorney General & his deputies, who have a built-in structural bias, will have the sole power to determine whther or not a state qualifies for a death penalty fast track.
SB 1088 (the Sreamlined Procedures Act) is also waiting passage by Congress, which will basically all but strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over constitututional claims regarding imposition of the death penalty, unless 1) the state court found no error at all, OR the error has already been deemed “structural” by the US Supreme Court. Structural errors are ones that are so bad that they are reversible “per se”, i.e, without any showing of prejudice. They are few and far between: denial of counsel altogether, denial of a jury trial, denial of defendant’s right to testify, and a handful of others.
New proposal for Public Financing of Campaigns being shopped around the House by Dave Obey (D) Wisc. and Barney Frank (D) Mass.
Marie Cocco, WAPO Writers Group opines upon it…
A snowball has a better chance in Hell.
Peace