Why not?

Bush declassifying intelligence

Anyone else find it funny that while he was telling us he's going to declassify the National Intelligence Estimate he was complaining that some of it had been leaked to the press? That "it wasn't fair" because it was distorted and not the whole picture. That it was timed to influence the elections in November.

Well d'uh!

I mean how many times will you have to beat the Dems in order for them to learn to play the game using your (fear-mongering) rules?

So now that you have to suffer the results of them learning to be ruthless, unprincipled and how to respond with a total lack of ethics, morality and conscious you're going to call foul?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"Somebody's taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Who's afraid of "torture light"?
U.S. Iraq Policy: Going Down on One NIE?

This one (the NPR piece) points out that despite the "compromise" on the detainees issue, the administration still managed to keep the language which will allow it to torture people. Senator McCain and his compadres woosed out it seems. But of course, it doesn't seem that way since he opposed the president. And we all know how important appearances are (especially to someone being tortured in Poland or Saudi Arabia).

Senate Judiciary Panel Looks at Detainee Deal

The rights of the detainees to challenge their imprisonment in court. Mr Barensen (a white house lawyer from bush's first term) appearently believes that we should suspend our laws. *cough*buttmunch*cough* I think he's (Barensen) a threat to national security, Mister Attorney General. Ahem!

---

I had to park across the street the last few days. As I was walking across the (busy) street to the building the light changed and some bozo took off with his camero, revving the engine.

rrrmmmm, rrrmmmm

Do these guys realize how lame that sounds when compaired to other engines?
Say the 275 horsepower diesel engine in the M113A3?
The 1,500 horsepower gas turbine engine in the M1 tank?
The two 1,290 horsepower (2,580) gas turbine engines in the UH-1H Huey?

All engines that I've (personally) heard and been impressed by (I love the sound of a gas turbine spooling up!). And that doesn't even including engines in jet fighters or anything with a really big engine (say the four 260,000 horsepower turbines powered by a nuclear reactor which push a Nimitz class aircraft carrier - now that'd be a heck of an engine to tinker with!).

Probably not.

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We closed out the "season" for the Firefly game last night. My character didn't get much "screen time" but that was because of what he does. And Jack let me play one of the NPCs who was with the rest of the gang so I got some dice rolling and even a spectacular death scene (which Brand nearly ruined by saving John - but it made a heck of a cliff-hanger for the next season).

Up next John is going to run Conspiracy X for us. Should be fun but then I've never been a huge X-Files fan so I didn't really know what I was going to pick for my character schtick. Jack convinced me I should be some sort of an ordinary guy cop looking to find out why people do dumb stuff like that (think Garibaldi from Babylon 5). That should work and it's even new for me. W00t!

Okay that's enough for now I guess.

I think I know

the main difference between Shi'ates and Sunnis.

It involves who took over as leader of Islam (caliph or imam) after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him). Only his daughter (although there is some dispute whether he had one or four daughters) survived him so there was apparently, later (between 100 and 400 years later) disagreement over who should (have) take(n) over among his sons-in-law. Ali ibn Abi Talib, who ended up being the fourth caliph, was the one the Shia'tes claim was supposed to take over (using a speech Muhammad gave as justification) whereas Abu Bakr was the one who took over (followed by two more of his fellow sons-in-law). Sunnis claim he was elected by the muslim community. After that it gets a great deal more technical but most of it is (as far as I can determine from an afternoon of research) about as important as the main divisions between different Christian sects (which is to say terribly important to them - worth killing over even - but not necessarily quite as significant to outsiders or the rational).

But his life is an amazing read. He was rather progressive for the time. Around this time (he lived 570-632) men started becoming more wealthy and they wanted to ensure that their legacy was inherited by their own sons rather than any of their sister's sons. So women started becoming considered the property of their husbands and couldn't themselves, own property and upon the death of their husbands, all property went to his sons. He instituted changes in these rights as well as shifting personal responsibilty from tribal laws to a unified set of divine laws, eliminating many of the more barbaric customs of the region. It's interesting to note that now muslim countries are considered to be backwards in regards to women's rights. I wonder what he would think of this were he alive today?

He also, as a military leader, required a code of behavior of his soldiers which included not harming or molesting women or children and other rules which didn't enter western practice until hundreds of years later (the First Geneva Convention was held in 1864).

Most of this came from wikipedia,

Muhammad

But I'm going to have to do some more searchs on the internet to find other material and see what it has to say.

Ponderings

I heard a segment this morning on NPR, their reader reply segment. Normally I don't pay much attention to this since I rarely care what the great unwashed masses think. However three of them caught my ear.

Letters: Sept 11 Coverage

• Jennifer Folks, Amaganset, NY
  (it was a terrorist attack, not a muslim attack, what about all the catholic or protestant bombers in Ireland and the UK? what about McVey in OK?)
  
• Alison Laurie, Tilsa, NY
  (when would it be more appropriate than now?)
  
• Katherine Adams, Richmond, VA
  (MORON!, but then you wouldn't realize that what makes us America is what allows you to have stupid ideas like this, but then it's not illegal or treasonous to be stupid, is it?)
  

All of these people wrote in to complain about NPR's piece on Muslims in America, how muslims attacked the world trade center on September 11th, how if they didn't like life in America they should go somewhere where suicide bombers live, how it was inappropriate to air this segment in proximity to the 9/11 tribute, how they were seditious and treasonous to air that segment at all.

THIS is the mindset which elected Bush and got us into even more pain and trouble that we found after the attack. These are the kind of people who make me ashamed sometimes of being American.

And consider this report,

Who Left This Hole in the Ground, Mr. President?

Very eloquent. Not something I'm used to seeing at MSNBC.

I'm in the wrong business

Consider that today is day # 251 of this year. Week # 36, so 2 weekend days is 72, 251 - 72 is 179 work days so far this year.

Down the Homestretch, the House Wanders Off Course

The House of Representatives have worked so far this year, 80 days. And, except for the speaker, they make an annual salary of $162,500. That's $2,031.25 a day. I won't break it down into hours since I have no idea how many hours of during those 80 days they work. It couldn't, however, have been more than 24 so let's use that number, which is at least $84.63 an hour and at most (assuming an 8 hour work day) $253.90 an hour. I make $20.62 an hour (before taxes, $15.17 after). And that doesn't count times when I'm on call and have to work over and above regular hours. Or any other times I work above (which is whenever necessary).

I say again, we're in the wrong business.

And this week they've passed a bill banning the slaughtering of horses for human consumption and a bill to mint a coin commemorating the birth of Abraham Lincoln. Up next are H. Res. 912, "Supporting the goals and ideals of National Life Insurance Awareness Month" and H. Res. 605, "Recognizing the life of Preston Robert Tisch and his outstanding contributions to New York City, the New York Giants Football Club, the National Football League, and the United States."

Apparently the record for inactivity, the "Do Nothing" House was set in 1948 when they only worked for 110 days and passed 1,191 pieces of legislation. So far this house has 80 days and 400 pieces.

I say again, we're in the wrong business.

But when I mentioned this to Alan, he pointed out that these are the top 538 liars in America and if I didn't rank in that august company I couldn't get this job.

Ah well.

Sanctioned murder

I read a lot of things in the news today about the upcoming "docudrama" about the events leading up to 9/11 that's going to be aired on ABC. I like something I read on BlogHer.org in reference to documentaries (or "docudramas") which are filled with factual errors (which even ABC admits this is), they say (in reference to one about the Holocaust a few years ago);

"... either it’s not fiction, or it’s not about the Holocaust."

I think it's an effort by certain network executives to propagate the only Republican/neo-con political tactic which seems to work, fear-mongering ("Oh look! Terrorist! Vote for us!")

Another phrase which catches my eye was in reference to President Clinton;

"... but then-President Bill Clinton refuses to authorize his murder -"

Since murder is illegal I would think refusing to authorizing it would be a good thing.

But then certain people would point out that 9/11 wouldn't have happened had we murdered bin Laden. I would say that hindsight is 20/20 and we can't get much that's useful from it. While that may very well be true we have no way of knowing for sure if it is true or if something else might have happened which could have been even worse.

And what kind of nation would it make us if we murdered people because of what they might do someday? Would you really want to live there?

Spurious "Logic"

War on Terror

Misters Frist and Mcconnell are mistaken. It's pretty much (from my laymen's understanding of logic) impossible to prove why something didn't happen. So claiming

"The bottom line is that there have been no terrorist attacks in the united states since 9-11." (Frist)

and

"It's been because we've been on offense going after these people in Afghanistan, and in Iraq." (Mcconnell)

Are just more examples of Republican/Neo-con fear-mongering.

It would be nearly impossible to produce anything like proof of these claims. Oh, say, testimony by an Al-Queda leader who has been involved in their strategic planning. So why not claim anything you want, say "Free chocolate cake for everyone in America!"

That's an idea I can get behind Mister Frist!

Interesting

I was poking around the internet as I'm wont to do on Fridays and I found the link to build your google home page. The default had some interesting things on it and I ended up adding some other stuff, including a section entitled "How Stuff Works". That lead me to

What exactly is fascism?

Which was an interesting read. Apparently there is no one clear definition of "fascist". Rather she presented a list of common criteria and I find it interesting that the Bush Administration seems to be clearly identifiable with several of these points. The importance of the government over individual people (as evidenced by the slow - and sometimes not so slow - errotion of our civil liberties). They (carefully) don't say much about class divisions but much of what they do seems inclined to maintain the clear distinction between the rich and the poor. And Bush was certainly charismatic for the last six years.

Hmmm.

I say, I say

(again) I've had enough of the fear mongering!

Iraq war's ties to Sept. 11 have unraveled

Now I don't often agree with Mr. Pitts, but he's got a good point there.

"On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack that devastated the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And the United States rose in righteous fury, immediately declaring war on Thailand. Because, you know, it was in the same part of the world as Japan and the people kind of looked alike and besides, those Thais had been getting a little uppity and were due for a smackdown."

Let's hope he's right and more people understand that swill now.

Irrational!

but then I'm not really surprised by that.

Will a New Stem-Cell Technique Satisfy All?

Religious, scientists debate stem cells

Stem cell research: where it is at

The neo-cons opposed stem cell research. I can understand that even if I don't agree with their reasons, that harvesting the stem cells from embryos (destroying the embryo) destroys life.

So the scientists find a way to get stem cells without destroying the embryos. It seems like the ideal solution for the problem. It's not stopping research but it is cutting down the federal funding for the research, which seems to have so many possible benefits for so many sick people. They pull one cell from the embryo and then have a new method which can produce more stem cells from that one. The embryo isn't harmed any more than it would be if it were tested for genetic defects and diseases, testing which is a relatively common occurence.

So it would seem to me to be the solution to their objections.

However now they are claiming that this one cell is life and taking it from the embryo destroys life.

It seems to me that their objections are emotional and irrational, they're trying to have it both ways, trying to appear to be logical and rational when they are, in fact, objecting because they fear science. And I've had enough of fear mongering thanks to mister Bush and his antics.