October 2007 archive

Oct 12 2007

Your Pee-Pee is Safe with the TSA




Far be it from me of accusing the U.S. government of examining your genitals — or your children’s tiny privates — before you board an airplane for Disney World.

As a matter of fact — from a tremendously pragmatic point-of-view — I really do believe that all laws and constitutional rights pertaining to privacy should be suspended if the US government is to keep you safe. After all, the United States has forcefully created determined enemies who will attempt to kill you and your children, in revenge, for the next 50 years or so.

I mean, we killed their kids, right? Tit for tat and all that….

TSA Promises Privacy For Subjects Of Clothing-Penetrating Scans

The millimeter wave scanning system being tested at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport can see through clothing to detect weapons, explosives, and other objects.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration today promised to protect air travelers’ privacy as TSA personnel peer through their clothes.

The TSA has begun testing a millimeter wave scanning system at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport as an alternative to pat-downs performed by security personnel when secondary screening is deemed appropriate. The technology can see through clothing to detect weapons, explosives, and other objects.

The TSA said that energy emitted by millimeter wave technology — 10,000 times less than a cell phone — is safe, that the technology is intended to keep passengers safe, and that it will keep the potentially embarrassing images safe.


Oct 12 2007

Al Gore, Nobel Winner: Godspeed, Sir!

gore nobel 1100 t

Oct 12 2007

Mychal Bell Jailed Again — Equal Protection Under the Law — NOT

Just read a diary over at Daily Kos by rico — turns out that Mychal Bell (of the Jena 6) has been jailed again.

From the link (and it’s a short article so I am quoting its entirety – hope that is all right):

JENA, La. (AP) – A Louisiana teen at the center of a civil rights controversy is back in jail.

The father of Mychael Bell says a judge in Jena (JEE’-nuh), Louisiana, has revoked Bell’s probation because of an old drug charge that had never been tried.

Bell and five other black teenagers had been accused of beating a white classmate. He was originally charged with attempted murder and then convicted of battery. An appeals court threw out the conviction, saying the case should have been brought in juvenile court.

Bell was released last month after thousands demonstrated in Jena to protest the severity of the charges against the teens.

Bell’s father says his son was detained after going to juvenile court for what was expected to be another routine hearing.

And Mychal needs to go to JAIL for this?  After he had already served so many months?  Something about this whole thing just plain stinks.

Ok, let’s see.  Be a mercenary and murder all kinds of folks, women, children, in Iraq?  No problem, no jail.  Head a telecommunications corporation and spy on Americans?  Hey, we’ll make sure you are retroactively protected!  Leak information about a covert CIA agent, risking our own national security?  Oh no problemo, a Presidential pardon awaits!

Equal protection under the law has become a joke.

Mychal Bell goes with his father to a routine hearing in juvenile court.  And now he is in jail.  Let’s look at a worst case scenario.  Let’s say he has broken probation.  Let’s say he has had problems with crime.

Let’s look at the picture here.  A white student pulls a gun on black students, they wrestle the gun away from him — the black students are arrested.  The white student doesn’t even get a slap on the wrist.

Oct 12 2007

The Stars Hollow Gazette

I hated water skiing with Uncle Ralph.  He was Aunt Alida’s second husband and they lived in a ranch house perched on the edge of a quarry lake.

What’s a quarry lake?  Basically a pit filled with water.  The house was kind of a normal house on top of a steep driveway as you got near the edge of the crater.  The downstairs was a game room with a Pool Table and a genuine One Armed Bandit that paid out real money and was totally illegal as Uncle Ralph would proudly boast.

And a rack of water skis and pile of life vests and a changing room and laundry so you could wash your bathing suit before you got home.

When you stepped on the patio what immediately attracted your attention were the pike and walleye heads nailed to the trees while you clunked down the steep terraces toward the dock.

It was a funny kind of lake.  Three feet deep for about thirty feet out.  Then a watery plunge.  The dock was set up so you could step off the side and play around or dive straight into hell.

As a two ski skier I was sneered at as worthless and weak- real men (and women) slalom.  Uncle Ralph delighted in throwing me at rocks and docks and generally jerking me around.  He was a mean boat driver, I’m not kidding.  Last time my dad skied he skied with Ralph and dad could slalom and went down hard.

Still, it had its good points.  After you had suffered enough you could climb up and play pool with cousins you didn’t know and can’t remember; and later, when Uncle Ralph had driven everyone into a cliff, he’d give you a cup of quarters and let you play slots ’til you lost them all.  Then it would be about dinner time.

If you brought your own money you could play nickle, dime, quarter with Uncle Ralph and all the other older relatives on the big felt pool table.  It was an odd night I didn’t walk away $4 or $5 dollars richer, but they were my relatives and I didn’t see them that often and I am a very good poker player.

Oct 12 2007

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

It was so gracious of Madame Speaker to take a few minutes out of her busy schedule whoring for war criminals to chat with Wolf Blitzer and Dana Milbank.  I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I learned a lot from these helpful interviews.  For example, I had no idea that Democrats curling into fetal positions every time The Decider appears at a podium is actually courageous defiance.  I had no idea that handing Bush $300 billion to keep getting American soldiers killed in Iraq is supporting the troops.

I had no idea this 60-vote barrier in the Senate was such a sacred bipartisan tradition.  Ever since this Beltway Race to Batshit Land started back in 2001, I thought it was a shameful trick only treasonous obstructionists would resort to. I had no idea that taking Impeachment off the table would unleash a juggernaut of accountability of such awesome power that Scooter Libby might lose his license to practice law. 

Oct 12 2007

The Party that likes to Save Peoples’ Lives

Clammyc wrote about how the Republican Party likes to destroy peoples’ lives. It seems to me that in order to combat all this, we should talk about reforming the Democratic Party into the party that likes to save peoples’ lives. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the big things, like Iraq; it also has to be the little things, like Patty Murray’s bill to ban asbestos in the US that passed the Senate.

1. BANS ASBESTOS

Prohibits the importation, manufacture, processing and distribution of products containing asbestos.  The ban covers the 6 regulated forms of asbestos and 3 durable fibers.  The EPA will issue rules to ensure asbestos products are off the shelves within 2 years of the bill’s enactment.

Oct 12 2007

writing in the raw: where IS melvin?

i don’t have much tonight. i thought i’d write about writing on the blogs. like how to structure these essays or diaries. how to make them work better. but suddenly, i don’t want to anymore. I want to jam about Jay Elias’s essay, Of Politics and People

Many of you may wonder why I have been so dogged with my “Quotes for Discussion” posts over the last year.  I usually offer them up without context or commentary, and they are tangential to the point of the sites where I post them at best.  Further, few people, including few of you, bother to read them or discuss them.  And even more, sometimes the quotes, and my purpose in posting them, is very hard to gather.  So, I’ll tell you why.

I post those quotes to remind us about people, and to try to get people to think about them, often in a different way than usual for politics.  Because it is easy to speak of political policy and strategy without thinking about these things, about the crucial role that people will have in them.

It is my belief that most political programs and ideas fail because they are not conceived or implemented with people in mind.

emphasis mine (and also a bit out of order of the original)

And I want to go on about Delivery in jessical’s Pony Party: Oh Superman, In a Box.

Oct 12 2007

Music Censorship: An Overview

The President’s “Faith-Based and Community Initiatives” have enabled numerous –

Source

“government-funded social service jobs explicitly (to) refuse to hire Jews, gay people, and other undesirables in the name of religious freedom.”

Michelle Goldberg. “Kingdom Coming.” p. 107.

  I experienced something similar in an interview from a local pastor for a church job. I was asked questions about my beliefs that were none of his business, and was required to participate in religious activities, despite the fact I was only being hired to play music. I lied because I needed the work…

Oct 12 2007

Holding on to sanity

I wonder if you’re like me and think we might be living in some kind of crazy alternative universe where the inmates have taken over the asylum. And perhaps that’s why the only people who seem to be making sense these days are our comedians. I mean really, have you watched one of the so-called morning “news shows” lately? You don’t have to take a digital trip over to the likes of Malkin or Drudge or Fox News to feel like your head is spinning with the crazies. Because, while

Oct 12 2007

writing in the raw: pre-whoring brought to a whole new level

I’ll be up at 10pm on the front page. i couldn’t get Jay Elias’s essay, Of Politics and People, out of my mind. I’m hoping to stir up some stuff… and see if it grabs you as it did me… here’s what i thought was brilliant (i have it out of order)…

Many of you may wonder why I have been so dogged with my “Quotes for Discussion” posts over the last year.  I usually offer them up without context or commentary, and they are tangential to the point of the sites where I post them at best.  Further, few people, including few of you, bother to read them or discuss them.  And even more, sometimes the quotes, and my purpose in posting them, is very hard to gather.  So, I’ll tell you why.

I post those quotes to remind us about people, and to try to get people to think about them, often in a different way than usual for politics.  Because it is easy to speak of political policy and strategy without thinking about these things, about the crucial role that people will have in them.

It is my belief that most political programs and ideas fail because they are not conceived or implemented with people in mind.

Oct 12 2007

The Aristocracy

“An enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion… will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government.” –Thomas Jefferson

No real original point to make here, no real solutions either, but it certainly does reinforce my point about The People. I am a tad uncomfortable comparing our current situation with the French Revolution…..guillotines make me nervous…. but….

I thought this was a democracy!

I suppose  representative democracy contains a certain element of aristocracy within it, at least in as much as the representatives will come to consider themselves above the people, better than the people.

Especially the long serving ones. Especially the long serving ones that have participated in gerrymandering etc. to make sure they STAY long standing. Especially the long serving ones who have people camped out in front of their house.

(btw I have no knowledge that Pelosi has participated in gerrymandering)

I suppose it only really becomes a problem when the representatives demonstrably stop representing the people….like this… Poll: 70% Support Fully Funded Withdrawal or NOTHING by andgarden…..

As I say….I am uncomfortable with talk of guillotines….but I become less uncomfortable with the word revolution everyday.

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

  Thomas Jefferson

Oct 12 2007

The party that likes to destroy people’s lives

Now, it isn’t totally that simple, but it really is that simple.  This has been the general modus operandi for the republican party – at least over the past decade.  Forget about governing, forget about issues, forget about any discourse or even heated debate.  It is either you march lockstep completely on everything or your life will be destroyed.


This starts at the top and works its way down throughout the party apparatus – the administration, the Congressional leadership, mainline members of Congress, the “mouthpieces” like Rush, Hannity, Malkin, Coulter and the like, and of course the “keyboard kommandos” at LGF and at Freeperville.  This is precisely why the level of discourse in this country has devolved to, well, next to nothing.  This is why we ended up in Iraq and have the major issues with respect to all of the problems facing the country.

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