Posts from — April 2007

CNN contributor Roland Martin gets it – it wasn’t the racism, it was the sexism.

The media kept up with the race side and did their best to ignore that the players were attacked and belittled because they were women and they play really good “roundball”. For those that missed it, not all of the players on the Rutgers team are black.

And while we are on sexism, let’s address the comments issue again. It isn’t the “heat in the kitchen,” it’s the cockroaches. No one should put up with cockroaches in the kitchen, but a sign saying “no cockroaches” isn’t the solution.

From the AP: Man Sentenced For Printing Lewd Stickers

A Byron [Minnesota] man, who distributed sexually vulgar stickers featuring his ex-girlfriend’s name, phone number and address, has been sentenced to four months in jail after pleading guilty to a felony harassment charge.

Thomas Carl Tiedeman, 62, who appeared in Dodge County District Court on March 21, was also ordered to serve five years on probation, perform 32 hours of community service and pay a $100 fine.

The behavior is illegal. It is important to file charges. People can be tracked down using the information their browser, blogging software, and site counters provide. Don’t ignore it; stomp on them.

[Read more →]

What Football?

Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it?

[Editor: Ringo is decidedly unhappy in her current condition. The restrictions on her normal activities are frustrating, but she was warned.]

Friday Ark

Athenae had to bid good bye: Thanks, Joe

Lab Kat learned that Coby has chronic renal failure.

The world must apparently struggle along with one fewer white guy on the radio. Most of us already felt there was a surplus of rich, middle-aged, drunks and junkies on the air waves, but the rich white guy demographic that makes up the punditry will go through a period of ashes and sack cloth.

[I know that I’m supposed to refer to rich white guys who abuse drugs and alcohol as Mr. President…whoops chemical dependent, because they get to go to spas and call it rehabilitation, while non-rich, non-white people get thrown in jail, but screw them. I refused to act like I empathize with people who “can’t deal with fame and fortune,’ or to consider it as a better excuse than being poor and desperate.]

I know that it is going to be blamed on the vicious attacks of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who just couldn’t be satisfied with an apology, well, sorry, but Al and Jesse don’t have that kind of pull. As Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog notes, Al and Jesse have been going after rappers for two years without success.

So what happened?

[Read more →]

Chicago Dyke of Corrente has scored a major coup, an interview with Helen Thomas.

Go and read the wisdom of a real reporter.

A New York Times investigative report shows: In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

Voter fraud, tort reform, Social Security melt down – these are lies. They are lies to sell a political agenda and to screw “the little people.” They want to keep “the wrong people” from voting and institute internal passports, just like the Stalinists. They want to help their friends in the insurance industry and screw their enemies, the defense attorneys. They want to give access to the only large source of unplundered money the government holds to the financial markets, and to hell with the workers that money came from.

Every time there is an unbiased study on any of these issues the answer is always the same – there is no “there” there. The claims are bogus. The people making the claims cite anecdotes, not facts, and most don’t want to testify under oath.

The Associated Press has the results of the Pentagon’s review of the problems: Walter Reed review cites money woes, neglect

Money woes and Pentagon neglect are to blame for shoddy outpatient conditions and bureaucratic delays at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, an independent review has concluded.

The blistering report called for major changes in troop care and cautioned that problems probably extend to Army hospitals around the country.

[snip]

Citing lapses in leadership and oversight as main reasons for the problems, the nine-member independent group concluded that the Defense Department was, or should have been, aware of the widespread problems but neglected them because they knew Walter Reed was slated for eventual closure.

In addition, the Pentagon made problems worse by ordering a hold-down on costs and expenses — dubbed “efficiency wedges” — even as Walter Reed began experiencing an influx of thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two wars in progress and Rumsfeld recommends eliminating a major military hospital, and then cuts its funding. Rumsfeld was never interested in “supporting the troops,” he was interested in reducing the military to low-paid killers, with all of the money going to private companies that were Republan campaign supporters.

He was pushing to eliminate schools, hospitals, and grocery stores on military bases, and anything else that wasn’t directly involved in combat. He was attempting to implement the Soviet military dream of central control through a computer network.

Associated Press report on CNN: Leahy: Aides lying about White House-Justice e-mails

President Bush’s aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, a powerful Senate chairman said Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.

“They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

“You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers,” said Leahy, D-Vermont “Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”

You have the local copy in your e-mail program, the copy on the sending mail server, the copy on the receiving mail server, and the copy on the recipient’s computer. ISPs do tend to back-up and mirror servers. That doesn’t even take into consideration what a data recovery program can do with “deleted” information.

I don’t think the “Rose Mary Woods” defense is going to work.

The Associated Press obiturary is rather good.

He is an acquired taste that everyone should acquire. He had the proper respect for the absurd, and saw the world as it was, not as he wished it to be. He lived in the seeming hope that any biography would be filed under Fiction.

Fortunately they never succeeded in burning his books.

CNN on the brief announcement: Gates: Army tours extended by three months.

Gates has extended all war zone deployments to 15 months, but says troops will be “guaranteed” 12 months at their home base between deployments. The troops know they will get the 15 months, but the “guarantees” about home time have been consistently violated.

This really sucks for the lives of the troops. You try to make plans, but they keep moving the goal posts. This is going to be a real hardship on the families, and many won’t survive the changes.

The prudent thing would have been to call for enlistments and expanded the military in September of 2001. No one was certain what was going to happen, but it only makes sense to prepare for a worse case scenario until you know what you face.

Think about what they did – this was supposedly the “greatest challenge the nation ever faced,” but there’s no need for more troops, no reason not to cut taxes, and you should go shopping. Does that make sense to anyone?

Michael at Musing’s musings attempts to explain a small chunk of reality to the “Child in Chief” – Congress controls the money. While Lemme ‘splain. is as complete as one could hope, maybe it needs some small cartoon animals to keep up the interest, perhaps a goat.

I don’t know that it means anything other than a technical problem, but Steve Gilliard’s News Blog has been showing a blank template all day.

Must have been a glitch, it’s back up.

Lurch at Main & Central covers the latest attempt by Major General “Baghdad Bill” Caldwell, spokesweasel for MessoPtomainia, to convince the world that the people attacking US forces have to have an external state sponsor, because that’s what Darth Cheney and the neocons believe.

These people can’t understand that the Cold War rules no longer apply, and people can be nasty without having a government behind them. The fact that you can’t bomb anyone and get results may be disappointing, but it’s reality in the current situation.

We went through this a month or so back with the phony weapons show. It was embarrassing when you realize that the guys running this war can’t even create fraudulent evidence that will stand up to a Google search. Come on, guys – the Iranian arms industry has a web site with pictures on it, show a little effort.

Swopa at Needlenose and Kevin Drum at Political Animal cover the leaked report about the Shrubbery trying to create the position of “War Tsar”, or some such stupidity to handle the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The military commanders in those countries report to the Commander of Central Command. The ambassadors report to an Assistant Under Secretary for the region. The purpose of the National Security Council in the White House is to coordinate these things. The National Security Advisor should be making some decisions, and all that is needed is for the President to back his own advisor.

Appointing a new person is extraneous and pointless. If you claim to be the “Commander in Chief”, the “War President”, and the “Decider”, why do you hire someone else to do those jobs? You can’t just say you’re in charge; you have to actually be in charge.

Beyond that, Congress won’t fund it, and the people who are qualified already know that it’s a job for a scapegoat.

Chicago Dyke at Corrente caught an item on Yahoo news about the Menu Foods CFO making a stock sale after the company knew there was a problem, but before a recall was issued.

While looking for more information I found a CBC report that the tainted wheat gluten had made its way to Canada and the recall had to be expanded to include food from a Canadian plant.

The stock issue was dealt with in passing:

Meanwhile, Menu Foods’ chief financial officer on Tuesday told the Globe and Mail that it was a “horrible coincidence” that he sold 4,000 units in the company almost three weeks before the extensive recall was issued.

Mark Wiens said that while the company began fielding pet illness reports in February, he didn’t learn of the problem until March.

So in Canada, a potential for huge financial liabilities because of a product defect doesn’t result in the financial people in the company being notified immediately. [Yeah, right.]

Because this is now a problem for multiple companies a good place to find information is the FDA recall page which links to information from Menu Foods, Del Monte, Hills, Nestlé Purina, and Sunshine Mills products.

I read on a site during my search that the melamine may have been added to increase the protein level in the gluten when it was tested and priced. The site is a bit strange and “tin foil,” but amines are proteins, so there is some logic and science in the guess.