deadissue.com

Any Rand’s mind is one that conservatives champion, rightly in my opinion, as the concepts that underpin modern day conservative politics can unlikely be articulated much better than through her writing.  My leanings towards conservatism have a lot to do with her writing, and for that reason no one here can likely remember a time when I railed against free trade or capitalism as a detriment to mankind when put beside socialism, or that the primary root of evil lies within the system working within our lives today.  Rather my philosophy today has much to do with incompetence and the looting of personal property for the benefit of individuals with political power – through the subsidized benefit of a business and therefore an individual using the tax revenue taken from you and I – allowing these individuals to realize success and an influx of wealth that otherwise they could not produce for themselves in the free market.  Read More

Head full of thoughts so I come downstairs wondering if Cleo got outside again and thus I’m shaking a little bag of treats by a window in the basement I’ve had proped open for a couple days (hoping she’d notice it and come back in you see) of course forgetting to close it again come morning when she’s already awoken both Heather and I to the sight of virgin dull color splatter behind the clouds before curling up into a ball between us above the covers just like she did in mama’s belly somewhere in Baltimore before coming to live with us a couple of years ago, but instead of that doing the trick (shaking a bag of treats in the basement where she couldn’t hear it) I park my kiester down here at the screen to see what’s going on in the tubes and in a minute she comes in from the screened in porch right in front of me so relief trickles it’s way down to these fingers half occupied with Cleo now nestled on my lap purring and the other ones taping the button that brings the screen to life with words and images all crammed through the tubes up and shouting at me like starving dockworkers in the 1920s begging for the chance to afford dignity on rye bread, dry with lettuce and tomato when something in particular smacks me so hard across the face my teeth wiggle…

Uncensored ‘On the Road’ to be published   Read More

A streetlight with no courage flickers insanity across sidewalk split all over with tufts of grass and dirt plump up and down so a bug with something to do maneuvers over one mountain then another without fear or even the memory of ever being late for anything besides that one time it all went bad during a burrow into soft soil already occupied by tens of tens of however many smaller bugs with enormous strength and blood-curdling shrieks yet not a wing among them so the mad hurl in reverse worked like a charm and a little bit of pain the only cost, though from that experience a reluctance to slow down or think carried nerves and appendages onward and upward often away from everything except food and moisture and artificial lighting.

A google ad on this site led me to a company that pays you money to take surveys.  A google search of that company and the word ‘scam‘ next to it brought up pages of people who were burned.  The dates of these testimonials go back to the begining of the month and probably even before that, yet the company is still stealing money.  Investigating something like this is not impossible, as an account was paid out of to get the google ads posted, an account was paid into by schmucks who fell for the pitch.  Right there you have two pieces of information.  The web hosting company that houses the site, that bill has to be paid every month.  When the site is updated by its owner, an IP address is used…is it a different IP whenever someone logs in to update the site or the same one?  We can assume that many are set up outside of the country, yet if we’re freezing assets in the ‘war on terror’, couldn’t the same be done to a company like this? 

I get the feeling that our government ‘could’ do something to make it more difficult for people to get ripped off, but to do so would require coordination and good police…are we all out of both right now?  Is a criminal scumbag making money off of the internet just that much smarter than the federal government?  Or – do the lobbyists for google and web hosts pay enough in campaign contributions to keep the feds off their case? 

What would it take to start up an investigation team on my own?  Would the government supply grant money if I were to get good at catching these people, or at least creating good leads and identifying patterns?  If we had the evidence that an account was being used for criminal activity, would the Justice Department freeze assets and go after the owners of these accounts?  If the account never leads to someone, couldn’t that money be funneled back into grants for people like me to hunt more of them down? 

henry

I think it’s officially time for us to tool up and storm the capitol!

#1 – Halfway down this article in today’s paper I developed an ulcer – I.R.S. Cuts target lawyers who audit the richest

The Bush administration has successfully lobbied Congress to enact measures that reduce the number of Americans who are subject to the estate tax — which opponents refer to as the “death tax” — but has failed in its efforts to eliminate the tax entirely. Brown said Friday that he had ordered the staff cuts because far fewer people were obliged to pay estate taxes under President Bush’s legislation. But six IRS estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the IRS to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits. Sharyn Phillips, a veteran IRS estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a “back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax.”

We’re not yet exusing soldiers from their responsiblities as human beings and professionals (the ones that coverups aren’t able to protect), so this case of euthanasia could in fact become a turning point, although the circumstances may determine that a criminal charge is not warranted.  Personally, it really angers me to know that Army interrogators are in jail right now for following orders.  Circumstances dove their bosses to extremes that fell outside of the law, and whoever didn’t obey orders…they were screwed in a different way than those now sitting in prison.

What authority did these people refer to when they adminstered the lethal doses?  Barring plea-bargains, this trial will indicate where we’re at as a society, and the logic that leads the jury to its decision will equal an answer to whether or not those soldiers are where they belong.  Stress, pressures none of us can understand…that’s what people like this are facing when they do what they do.

ASSIST from Van Helsing forwarding the following links:

• 3 arrested in New Orleans hospital deaths
• 3 Arrested in Katrina Hospital Deaths
• Doc, Nurses Arrested In Katrina Deaths

Brownback and Inhofe ran point for the opposition, yet during all of the debate on the Senate floor they failed to convince on the science.  This is because they refered to science hardly at all in terms of citing expert opinions that backed their stance.  Several times they read long stories of people whose lives were saved by adult stem cell therapies already in practice today, and by the time a vote took place, ‘scientifically’ their only position was that adult stem cells provided great hope for the future of medicine.  That point wasn’t argued against by those in favor of the bill, nor was it going to be effected by the outcome of the vote in any way. Read More

Boy do some of them want it! Bill Kristol is apparantly the cheerleader, again.  Pick apart these arguments all you can, but first understand the upside of engaging Syria and Iran.  If Israel launches the offensive, they can be fighting a war on four fronts instead of two.  “Politically and militarily this would simplify things quite a bit”, Kristol reports having been told by his “extremely intelligent sources”.  Air support from the US would simply be the icing on the cake.  Combined, we could bring down thunderous peace in the Middle East and save the world from this terrorist element. 

Interesting program on baboons in communal settings, how they interact and communicate, express emotion, and how their impulsive behavior can be explained now thanks to this video research.  The male baboon feels the need to blow off some steam, but being one of the weakest in the community, to engage another male is too risky.  Observe…the female is quick to thwart this male’s advances and he scurries away, quite satisfied with himself.

More educational programing:

• ‘Stars and Stripes’ Lands Exclusive, and Revealing, Bush Interview
• Road to Riches – Chicago Tribune (3 parts) – Dennis Hassert
• Washington Babylon – Vanity Fair – Corruption

BEST STORY:

Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones – Study – NYTimes

Ed Burns

Writer and Producer Ed Burns talks to HBO about being a teacher in Baltimore’s inner city and how that experience is informing Season 4 of The Wire.
Read More

I’ve held off on writing this for quite a while, Read More

New York Observer 

According to Journal staffers with knowledge of the situation, Mr. Simpson, who is based in Brussels, had been working for months on a story about government monitoring of the international banking system operated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT. On June 22, Mr. Simpson was in Washington when a Treasury source tipped him that The Times would be publishing a piece on the subject, according to Journal sources. Mr. Simpson delayed a flight back to Belgium and raced to put out a piece on deadline, posting one online minutes after the Times story went out. The Journal, The Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post all had SWIFT stories in the next day’s papers.

The wall between news and opinion has traditionally been a tall and sturdy one at The Journal—with missiles lobbed over it. The editorial side has never been afraid to pick its own facts to support its arguments, even if those facts conflict with the ones reported in the paper’s news columns. Nor has it been reluctant to attack Journal reporters for writing stories that disagreed with its editorial premises, as when it downplayed the Enron scandal while Journal reporters were documenting the corrupt energy giant’s downfall.

“They’re wrong all the time. They lack credibility to the point that the emperor has no clothes,” said one staffer whose reporting has been at odds with an editorial crusade.

I’ll just post the chat as it took place.  FYI – I’ve been tossing up the whiskey bottle today, so the urgency relayed in this chat may not seem appropriate…along with the posting of this chat in the first place…but Al Swearengen is out for the good of the camp, not just himself.  Background – a java program is due on Friday that equals a quarter of the final grade.  The chat archive is impossible to follow as the visual is two minutes ahead of the audio describing what’s taking place: Read More

The Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens had ‘net neutrality’ in front of him in the form of a staffer and some lobbyists working for telecom giants Verizon and AT&T.  After a few minutes the vote was secured, and fifteen minutes later the presentation was finished, a summary on paper handed over, handshakes.  What his friends have talked to him about here is billions (?) of dollars worth of bill payments from companies like Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Sears, etc. based on the amount of people with computers and internet connections who access their site however many times. 

So a website owner pays hosting fees or buys their own hardware, pays an internet service provider (Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc.) for a connection to their servers.  People with computers have paid for their own hardware and also pay an internet service provider (Same Companies) for a connection.  On both ends of the connection, a payment is made.

What the service providers are now saying to Chairman Stevens is that because Comcast collects a monthly payment from a website that attracts people with computers who might pay AT&T or Verizon their monthly payment, one of the companies might get over on the other one somehow.  Say everyone in Bakersfield, CA pays AT&T for an internet connection and they all go to Yahoo! everyday, which pays Comcast for it’s connection.  The wires from Bakersfield, CA to Yahoo! are being used and perhaps one company’s wires are used more in one instance than anothers’.

They want to get paid a third time, and since prices offered to customers is what drives sales in the industry, they can’t come to us for more money.  So they’re going after the websites for money.  Double-dipping…as if the phone companies had become their own country, established their own government, and had decided to tax twice for the same reason. 

Ridiculous argument in favor of stealing revenue from the rest of the market, but one that involves a lot of money…Chairman Stevens is a Republican.  A match made in heaven, romantic, like a round hole in the wall of a bathroom stall.  But that’s not really the most interesting thing about this story.  Instead, it’s the fact that Stevens has a position he believes in a great deal, yet talks about it like he’s either taken acid, turned into Uncle Junior from the Sopranos AND/OR still hasn’t been able to figure out the electric can opener let alone the television remote. 

I suppose these positions are about who you know or who you made happy on the other side of that hole in the wall over the years, certainly it has nothing to do with experience or expertise.  The man claims to have been sent an “internet” that got clogged up in the “tubes” for three days.  Here’s his entire speech:

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.  But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?  I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.  So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.  We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people. The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time.

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.  It’s a series of tubes.  And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?  Do you know why?  Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.  Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.  Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.  It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.  The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

Meaning, there aren’t many web hosting empires up in Alaska, so his voters won’t care…and he did say he’d meet that lobbyist in the bathroom. 

Great question!  karl posted this in a comment and I think it deserves it’s own thread.  A linguist named Lakoff wrote a book I read last year, “Don’t think of an Elephant“, where he delves into the parent-child dynamic at play on the right in terms of policy both foreign and domestic.  I’m going to read the book mentioned here…read on:

DEAN: Goldwater Republicanism is really R.I.P. It’s been put to rest by most of the people who are now active in moving the movement further to the right than it’s ever been. I think that Senator [Goldwater], before he departed, was very distressed with Conservatism. In fact, it was our conversations back in 1994 that started this book. That’s really where I began. We wanted to find answers to the question, “Why were Republicans acting as they were?” — Why Conservatives had taken over the party and were being followed as easily as they were in taking the party where [Goldwater] didn’t want it to go.

OLBERMANN: What did you find? — In less than the 200 pages that the book goes into.

DEAN: I ran into a massive study that has really been going on 50 years now by academics. They’ve never really shared this with the general public. It’s a remarkable analysis of the authoritarian personality. Both those who are inclined to follow leaders and those who jump in front and want to be the leaders. It was not the opinion of social scientists. It was information they drew by questioning large numbers of people — hundreds of thousands of people — in anonymous testing where [the subjects] conceded their innermost feelings and reactions to things. And it came out that most of these people were pre-qualified to be conservatives and this, did indeed, fit with the authoritarian personality. Read More

I know several people who would like to do away with journalism altogether, or at least minimize it’s relevance as much as possible.  If a journalist uncovers something you don’t want to believe, then find an excuse not to, problem solved.  Like a born-again Christian views science, large segments of our society (often one in the same) are treating the NYTimes like Darwin, and looking to the heavens for guidance…which of course comes in the form of Karl Rove telling you something you want to hear.  Want to believe that we’re days away from defeating the Iraqis who kill our soldiers?  Go right ahead.  Want to believe that Noah had a pet dinosaur?  Go right ahead. 

Harpers had something good about journalism in Iraq, specifically what it’s about to be an imbedded journalist:

…She and the other journalists stationed at the base in Tikrit grew cynical about their work and came to believe that they were being used. “Other reporters in Iraq,” she said, “especially local Iraqis [working for Western outlets], were able to get both sides of the story, but we were getting only one side.” During her 45 days in Tikrit, she told me, she didn’t file a single story critical of the American project in Iraq. “There was no balance,” she said. “What we were doing wasn’t real journalism.”

A great day for that basic fact, and the impression that by the end of it they understood, things were brighter, more laid back, energetic with new toys, a new perspective with beach balls that you have to pick up with both arms because a grasp with the one hand won’t get the job done.  Chase that around and blow off some steam, enjoy special food all messy and eaten by hand, no bib, no needing to hold up your own bottle in the highchair, or worry about the tray getting too wet or uninteresting, courses of different tastes, textures, eatability on the face, floor, belly like it didn’t matter – even though it did – so of course they knew that, and it’s through things like this that I feel like when they went to sleep they were aware and grateful of something, mostly the idea that they’d been around for a whole year already…that’s how I see it.

NY POST Article

The cat’s out of the bag, as the man in charge of our troops and studying conditions “on the ground” says that a redeployment of thousands is planned for October.  General Casey says it, and the world should be outraged over the New York Times according to Republicans.  I see the unfolding of this act quite clearly, some oldies, some precise transitions between numbers and all the Christopher Guest styled peformances from all the actors.  The war is not only a mistake according to the voters, but the Supreme Court blasted the kangaroo court procedure invented by our White House to eliminate the word “law” entirely in regards to Guantanamo.  Bad week, as this is the same Supreme Court that a week prior had made it legal for police to enter your home uninvited.  Ideological leanings in regards to “Mr. Taxpayer” v. “The Man” are heavily in favor of the latter with this group, so the political reaction our right-wingers would be having if the court was stacked to the left would be that “the liberal Supreme Court choose the terrorists over Americans today, and when this war is over, blame belongs on it’s doorstep”.  That card is unavailable with the Alito-O’Connor swap, and whatever happens next is bound to equal a copious about media attention.  Negotiations with Congress over the legislation’s particulars are headlines, as are the disagreements which ensue, the analysis of particulars in legal opinions written by the justices (especially that of John Roberts) and how some columnist thinks it will all work out in the end. 

Navigation of all this requires someting the Republican machine showed a lot of this week, as it held on to the war as the backdrop, but changed the controversy from “Democrats are cowards” to “The New York Times wants us all dead”.  It won’t be this for long, as Monday-Wednesday should see the introduction of another thread, maybe even one the bosses consider their best asset.  To go along with the distraction, a couple stories have to be buried.  Namely, one about a bill passed that pegged student loan payments around 2% higher, at a fixed rate, effective yesterday – in a package that also included tax cuts…the other story is this business with Chief “I’m the President who gave you the job” Justice “Remember me when you’re settled in over there, and be sure to get your butt down to my barbacue” Roberts…a train wreck in the history of point shaving if there ever was one.  No one should be speaking about that come Monday.  “Legislation is being discussed…”, the progression from here clearly requires a considerable deposit of dignity, an amount that Tony Snow is unlikely to let go of with a smile on his face. 

The Times witch hunt is full of holes, but at least it speaks to a poll of some kind.  Americans think our news media is a disgrace, with an approval rating around 25%, so out of the 75% who agree on this matter, there’s got to be plenty who will accept this cause and disregard the facts.  Especially the one that President Bush had told us about how we were going after the terrorists’ money, something he’s talked about, that has appeared in articles with his quote, for months and years.  To say that SWIFT was helping us is about as shocking as knowing that Western Union is as well.  Pretending this is an issue right now has more to do with what General Casey said than anything else.  What I mean is, when a failed war is coming to an end, those responsible for it will try to shift blame however they can.  Re-deployment in October isn’t happening because things are any better in Iraq, and that’s a difficult concept for some to deal with emotionally.  The lesson of course being that when you decide to fight a war, make damned sure you WIN IT!  Because calling it a failure on account of people and organizations that had no control over the battle plan is a cowardly move.

Depressing stuff…