This company manufacturers and sells a medical device known as the CPAP. Consisting of a motor, tube and mask, the CPAP pumps a steady continuous flow of air through the mask and into the nose of a person while they are sleeping. Sleep apnea and chronic snoring are both known to be 100% neutralized when using this device. History has been full of remedies for these two conditions, and up until the CPAP entered the market, none of them ever worked. The downward trend in RMD’s stock price over the past 4.5 months has been something I’ve monitored closely, and if my weekend number crunching hadn’t been put off until today due to school, I’d have struck when the market opened on Monday. That is not the case, but regardless, I’m going in for 2400 shares at 41.54.
My instincts began to take over on my speculation regarding State Street Corp. last night, as I had spelled out clearly in the prose written yesterday that my expectations weren’t anything more than 10% over a year. I think that’s a very conservative estimate, but my instinct was to write it, so that means something. It’s a good case study in whether or not I’m wise to trust first instincts in such a way, and if the stock breaks out I’ll learn something. RMD will easily become the most expensive stock I’ve ever bought, with a P/E ratio over 52. And so, I essentially have decided to forgo the reasonably priced sedan that gets excellent gas mileage in lieu of a sports car I’d been drooling over for a long time now.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Economics at 12:50 PM GMT+4
1 Comment »
Lewis Black on right-wing paranoia
Michael Moore is interviewed by CNBC outside of the New York Stock Exchange (They wouldn’t let him in!)
Tommy Chong on Neil Cavuto’s show
Classic Barney Frank clip from 2006 (the GOP had just attached a cut in the estate tax to the minimum wage bill)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video at 3:06 AM GMT+4
10 Comments »
I haven’t written about anything market-related in a couple weeks. This is mainly due to other demands on my time, but my reading regime hasn’t waned, so the ideas I have are plentiful. One thing that’s on my mind is how tremendously shady the world of investment banking appears to be, with not only the collapse of two Bear Sterns hedge funds (both recently launched) within a week due to more mortgage woes, but the involvement of US Treasury Secretary Paulson in preventing SEC Chairman Cox from writing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of Enron shareholders. The ethical implications here are blinding, as Paulson came from Goldman Sachs to work in Bush’s cabinet, and the investment banks had already lost the trial. An appeals court overturned the verdict, and so the case was SCOTUS-bound, or at least it should have been.
My intention is to make sure that I’ve always got a piece of the finance-portion of the US economy in my portfolio, and now that BSC and GS are dancing the Charleston, I’m considering State Street Corporation. Their business is more about processing transactions on a global basis, so as individual regions expand, their revenue increases along with it. A single meltdown on the domestic side won’t derail State Street, and in times like these, when the known-unknowns (thank you Rummy) are piling up, this type of a business model is more my cup of tea. Clearly not as sexy as the aformentioned shadier banks – I’m not really expecting anything more than 10% if I hold it for a full year – the hundreds of sub-custodians (banks in countries abroad that act as weigh stations or distribution points for their nations’ customers) out there should see a regular increase in transaction volume month to month when compared with the previous fiscal year, and in the South Pacific especially, this will equal higher revenue for State Street. And since 99.999999999% of this extra work is completed by their internal information technology systems, the profit margin only grows from this trend.
Malaysia-focused ETFs are what I’m looking at right now, as along with the banking pick, I want to make sure that I’ve got an invitation to this party as well. What Latin America did for my portfolios from 2003-2006, a couple well placed purchases in this region could be just the thing to help rescue me from what has thus far been a pathetic showing this year through five months (+3.71%). Simply put, I’m looking outward for my piece of the near future. My trust in the FED is in tact, but with that said, there needs to be a lot more to smile at than a series of engineered statistics for there to be still this much juice left in the US stock markets for the rest of 2007. Still bullish on energy, especially oil, gas and coal – I’m not the slightest bit nervous about my two technology picks Oracle and Adobe – Iphone or no Iphone, I’m scared of all retail stocks at the moment, with Dell being the only one on my radar.
Ticker/Price/(Buy)/Shares/Value
ACI 35.01 (34.37) 1000 $35,000
ADBE 40.37 (41.89) 1650 $66,610.50
BAM 40.55 (39.60) 7327.5 $297,130.13
CNQ 66.39 (62.66) 3535 $234,688.65
ORCL 20.00 (19.17) 4000 $80,000
PBR 122.31 (101.04) 1891 $231,363.85
TS 49.15 (45.93) 2000 $98,320.00
CASH $100,127.53
Total $1,143,698.69
Gain 3.71% $40,883.33
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Economics at 3:27 PM GMT+4
1 Comment »
Week after week, this guy Padilla manages to look more and more like the poster child for what Republican authoritarianism is great at producing. There are many more taxpaying victims of small government, anti-New Deal conservatism out there, from Katrina victims to the folks who have been downsized and/or ruined by insurance that refuses to insure, but in Padilla’s case there is a dynamic that cannot be ignored. This of course being the fact that for every GOP Presidential candidate besides Ron Paul, keeping in place the system that murdered this man or even making it more ferocious and gruesome, happens to be a linchpin of their sales pitch. Attracting Republican primary voters, according to Campaigning Crack-whore Calculations LLC, apparently requires a candidate who is proud of his ‘Club Gitmo’ gear.
In right-wing world the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which rendered habeas corpus a thing of the past, is not a sign that our republic has lost its way, but rather a sign of progress. Never mind the fact that its inception was the result of incompetent law-breaking over a period of many years, resulting in the glut of mostly innocent individuals now in our custody, and the need to minimize exposure to shame or embarrassment over the reality of what that illegal behavior has actually accomplished. Habeas corpus wasn’t exiled for the sake of national security. Habeas corpus was a victim of partisan political expedience, for reasons spelled out in the Supreme Court’s decision on ‘Hamden v. Rumsfeld’, it had to be sacrificed for the sake of the (GOP) team.
That same team required also, years of sacrifice from one Jose Padilla, whose initial capture was hailed as a close brush with a potentially deadly and ‘dirty’ chemical oblivion. Imminent doom being the value-pick of our political marketplace at the time, our government’s hand was forced, and Jose’s threshold for pain had to be established, his capacity to swallow fear evaluated, his ‘animal’ skill set in the product testing labs enhanced. During this period in 2002, Padilla was denied access to his lawyer, and the government admitted that their information on him wasn’t enough to prosecute on. He was tortured for the purpose of extracting information that could then justify his next status as a “material witness”, and when nothing panned out, he became an “enemy combatant”.
John Ashcroft: “We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or ‘dirty bomb,’ in the United States.”
Paul Wolfowitz: “There was not an actual plan. We stopped this man in the initial planning stages.”
“(Administration officials)…said that the Justice Department was eager to showcase the Padilla case after weeks in which the FBI had been battered in Congress for missing potential warning signals of the Sept. 11 attacks.” (Sources 1, 2)
A reasonable plan had been established for quite some time regarding the disposal of his body, but of course the judicial activists in charge of our Supreme Court threw a monkey wrench into the works. Padilla was a US citizen, and that superseded his “enemy combatant” status, which required the government to either charge him with a crime or let him go. And a panic seemed to erupt all at once, as the assumption that Padilla’s corpse could be tossed into the incinerator and forgotten was not only contradicted, but in fact, his corpse would have to instead be presented for public inspection in a short amount of time.
Read the rest of this entry
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Justice at 12:11 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
In honor of the release of CIA documents revealing some of our more shady actions, I wanted to share this documentary called “The Shadow Government”, which appeared on PBS in the mid 1980s amidst the Iran-Contra scandal. Larry Johnson, the former CIA agent who blogs over at No Quarter wrote about the documents that were released: “…The report highlighted the following major crimes and misdeeds:
- The use of the mafia in a failed attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro.
- The illegal wiretapping of American newsmen.
- Analysis of domestic groups and political protesters.
- Unauthorized opening of mail of U.S. Citizens.
- Drug and behavior-alteration testing that probably resulted in the suicide of at least one U.S. citizen.
- Imprisonment of a Soviet defector without due process for more than two years.”
Here is the documentary:
Posted by Al Swearengen as History, Military, Video at 10:54 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
The Celts got smacked around once more by the ping-pong curse, and so the #5 pick on Thursday night is what we’ve ended up with after posting the 2nd worst record. As depressing as it was to watch the western conference scoop up two more top picks, the upside to all this is, at least it’s not 2006! This #5 pick in particular is worth something. The Boston Globe has a piece on Al Thornton and also a slide show with all of the possibilities for the Celts in this draft (there’s an obvious error on the first page).
One option was to trade the pick, Theo Ratliff and Gerald Green to Phoenix in exchange for Shawn Marion, and out of the 15 or so they have for you to vote on at the end, it’s the one I chose. When the results show
up I’m once again ashamed to be a member of ‘Celtic Nation’, as out of 9000+ votes, “Trade Paul Pierce” ends up in third place with over 12%. I’ve been calling people idiots for years now when they say this, and have realized that Pierce needs to learn how to fly in order to please the hoopleheads.
There was a time when I’d have a definite opinion about who we should pick, and a month ago I was all about getting Al Thornton, the senior out of Florida St. Then a couple of weeks ago I decided we needed the best defender available, which would most likely be Corey Brewer out of Florida. At this point my only conviction is that Ainge cannot not draft the Chinese guy. In this draft class there is one way in particular to ensure a stomach ulcer , and taking him at #5 would be just that. For the love of God (or Joseph Smith if it helps you see the light) Danny…turn this pick into a player who can earn 20+ minutes a night the second he walks onto the floor.
And then FIRE DOC RIVERS ALREADY, with the plan being to lure either Rick Carlysle or Jim O’Brien back to Boston. The team then learns how to earn minutes on the defensive end, get stops in the 4th quarter and get past the first round of the playoffs. I think it can all happen as long as there’s no Chinese guy at #5, and…well, at least if Danny doesn’t screw up the first part, it’ll only be a matter of time before Doc proves once again that he’s not cut out for this. (Bill Simmons on the draft)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, sports at 5:43 AM GMT+4
4 Comments »
This hearing on the air quality in New York City in the days and weeks following 9/11 would have never taken place. Christie Todd Whitman wouldn’t have had to sit at a table and answer questions under oath. She wouldn’t have had to view tapes of her statements attesting to the safe level of contaminants in the air on the days following the attacks, and wouldn’t have then been challenged with the conflicting scientific readings acquired by the city’s own environmental agency during that same time period. There would be no justice for the citizens who trusted the government’s word, breathed the air and now suffer from debilitating respiratory illnesses, some of which insurance will not cover.
And how about “The Hero”, Mayor Guliani? Republican blood surely runs through those veins, as his contribution to this lingering tragedy has been to “write a letter urging Congress to pass a law capping the city’s liability at $350 million”. Not a single hearing was held on the aftereffects of 9/11 while Republicans ran the Congress. How can a government lie about the air quality in NYC, allow thousands of workers at the site to operate without respiratory gear, and then refuse to even investigate how such a thing could happen? The photo ops were really all that mattered to the leaders who were in charge during this time, and if they are allowed to just skate on the abdication of their responsibility for ensuring public safety, what hope is there for us?
Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone Magazine) wrote a scathing piece on Rudy Guliani about a month ago, and really manages to sum up the issue here in a single paragraph:
Although respiratory-mask use was mandatory, the city allowed a macho culture to develop on the site: Even the mayor himself showed up without a mask. By October, it was estimated, masks were being worn on site as little as twenty-nine percent of the time. Rudy (Al: and the EPA) proclaimed that there were “no significant problems” with the air at the World Trade Center. But there was something wrong with the air: It was one of the most dangerous toxic-waste sites in human history, full of everything from benzene to asbestos and PCBs to dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange). Since the cleanup ended, police and firefighters have reported a host of serious illnesses — respiratory ailments like sarcoidosis; leukemia and lymphoma and other cancers; and immune-system problems.
That’s the bottom line here, and not a single leader who played a part in this has had the courage to simply tell the truth or (God forbid) offer an apology to the thousands of real heroes who were too busy removing human remains from the pile to consider whether or not their government was holding up its end. Now those very same people are too busy dying, with medical bills they’re unable to pay and a body that is unable to work for a living.
If the Americans who voted in November hadn’t sent the Republican Party packing, those heroes who can’t afford to feed their kids or purchase the medication they need to have a fighting chance for survival, would have been ignored for another two years! We’d never have had video clips like these: Rep. Bill Pascrell (NJ-08) questions Whitman on the EPA Inspector General’s report:
In a second round of questioning, Rep. Pascrell questions Suzanne Y. Mattei, Former New York City Executive of the Sierra Club and author of a book on this subject, about some of the claims of EPA officials, particularly the claim that it was dangerous “on the pile” but safe “off the pile”:
Read the rest of this entry
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, History, Justice, Video, politics at 6:54 PM GMT+4
28 Comments »
“Writing in his masterwork Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in 1922, Max Weber showed that the “bureaucratic class” (Beamtentum) manipulated state secrets in order to undermine democratic institutions. By wielding security classifications, they could claim an information monopoly and render the parliament impotent. Weber later revealed that he was thinking in particular of the General Staff and their political machinations in the last years of World War I. Germany had been turned into all but a military dictatorship, and Weber’s study showed, correctly,
that the claims of state secrecy were the single most effective tactic used to destroy the nascent Wilhelmine parliamentary democracy. Now, Max Weber never met Dick Cheney, but Cheney is just the man he had in mind; he is for America today what Ludendorff was in the third Oberste Heeresleitung in 1918. We all know what security classifications mean to Dick Cheney. You invoke them to keep your lurid dealings with oil executives, defense contractors and foreign potentates out of public sight. But then when you have a political adversary in the crosshairs, security classifications count for nothing. And today we learn just how literally true this is.” (Harpers)
- Is Bush Planning to Nuke Iran?
- Librarians Describe Life Under An FBI Gag Order
- The Jefferson Bible
- linuxsucks.org, runs Linux
- Ariz. woman’s face branded with ’snitch’
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 6:58 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
(SF Chronicle) The Giants issued a statement from owner Peter Magowan on Sunday saying, “When our partnership group took over the Giants in 1993, all of San Francisco was treated to a wonderful 103-win year. Nobody who was a part of that will forget Rod’s 48 saves. When we reached our dream of the playoffs in 1997, it was only fitting that Rod was on the mound for the final out that clinched the National League West.”
The next season, having gone to the Cubs as a free agent, he saved a career-high 51 games, including Chicago’s 5-3 victory over the Giants in a one-game play-in for the National League wild card. Beck’s velocity declined over the years, especially after he underwent “Tommy John” elbow surgery in 2002. By the time he signed with the Padres in 2003, he barely hit 83 mph with his fastball. However, when closer Trevor Hoffman went down with a shoulder injury, Beck converted 20 consecutive save opportunities.
Posted by Al Swearengen as sports at 5:53 AM GMT+4
3 Comments »
He screened the film for health care industry lobbyists, and they respond to him. I wish a discussion like this could take place on political television…right now there’s virtually none of this on Meet the Press or the other big shows. It’s all about the politicians, the stars. These lobbyists are doing the job they’re paid to do, and the corporations are doing the job their shareholders expect them to do. The press, when you add in the professional political bloggers, is quite good in print, but once audio and video are thrown into the mix, the quality diminishes. The horse race for 2008 and geopolitics seem to dominate too much of the output. This leads to domestic issues of great consequence being ignored in comparison. For this reason and probably many others, I’m glad Michael Moore exists and that he’s as good of a filmmaker as he is. SiCKO is only relevant in a society like ours – being dictated to as we are through our televisions – where only a fool would continue to believe in the status quo getting around to fixing anything that’s broken. A brouhaha over whether it’s actually broken at all is about as far as the status quo can manage to get. By design we’re conditioned to assume that this is the way of the world…millions of fools, myself included, are too fucking busy to have it any other way.
Also, be sure to check out the health care video I posted the other day.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, politics at 12:03 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
This guy played the father of Michael J. Fox on ‘Back to the Future’, and the film he was appearing on Letterman for was a piece of crap called ‘River’s Edge’. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why this one received good reviews, as it definitely ruined a Monterey Friday night for me about 10 years ago. Bad script, bad acting and they took a crowbar to the thing so they could jam a lot of odds and ends into it. Many of those involve Dennis Hopper, who inexplicably has dresser drawers stuffed full of marijuana and likes to dance with mannequins.
It’s supposed to be a film that portrays how immoral and oblivious the new generation of American kids really are. Crispin Glover plays a kid who appears to be very into speed, though you never see his character doing whatever would make a person act so wired, scatterbrained and certain. It’s a lot worse in real life for this guy, as this appearance is a train-wreck. He decided it would be a good idea to load up on acid before the show. I’ll let you decide how he did. Below the fold you’ll find his return appearance about five years later, and Dave really wants to talk about this first one.
Read the rest of this entry
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video at 4:17 AM GMT+4
1 Comment »
Either in school or on TV (or maybe I read about it), there was a study performed where 50 or so people were in a room and given a horoscope that was color-coded based on what the person’s sign was. This one pager was packed with text, meaning the horoscopes were more detailed than even the ones found in certain magazines. At the end of the reading period, a high percentage (I want to say over 90%) thought that it accurately described their situation in life. The whole point of the experiment was to determine whether people will bend their perceptions to accommodate what they are reading, and the answer turned out to be ‘yes’. They determined that this was true, because everyone in the room had the exact same horoscope, just on a specific color of paper based on their birthday.
I include this disclaimer because for the most part I think the concept is bullshit, but at the same time useful if it causes human beings to look inward and get to know themselves. That’s always a good thing. Then there are moments like tonight when I get to feeling like there might be something to it. I think of these moments as instances where God is telling me to stop doubting its own existence. If that is the case, then I want to thank God for not getting this point across with an Old Testament type of injury, like one meant to scare me into believing. And as far as that goes, I don’t think a God that does exist would be doing any of those horrible things to anyone in the first place. Meaning, if I have any faith at all in regards to ‘God’, it’s that he or she is not as much of a maniac as the holy books tell it.
This is more God’s style right here – Chinese food tonight for the family is house special fried rice, beef teriyaki and sesame chicken. Our cat Cleo will eat some of the beef and a few of the shrimp in the rice, and this combination is one that both of the boys can enjoy. With twins this can be a tricky thing come dinner time. Anyways…there are four fortune cookies, which I distribute. They are spot on for each of us, and if one had ended up in a different hand, they wouldn’t have made any sense.
Sam – Your reputation is your wealth.
Max – Your emotions are right on the surface, but that’s okay.
Heather – A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.
Papa – Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Religion at 1:02 AM GMT+4
1 Comment »
Voices of US War Resisters in Canada
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military, Video at 10:22 PM GMT+4
4 Comments »
Oh Me, then Plateau – RIP Kurt
Posted by Al Swearengen as Music, Video at 11:24 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
Posted on Soldier Voices Forum – this is a soldier who is in need of some help. I’ve neglected the email chain that alerted me to this for about a day now because of school, but now that I’ve read it, I hope that my fellow bloggers can help spread his story around. The ethical questions I’ve been hung up on for an hour or so all seem moot, as it would be me (and hopefully you) acting on this person’s behalf, and doing what he hopes would be done.
Things have escalated in the last 12 hours, and I need your (and anyone else who cans) help. I have finally sided with my conviction, and voiced my beliefs about the governments involvement in 9/11, and my belief that this “war” was staged. My company commander responded by acting as though he was going to attack me, he came across as seriously unstable and violent, initially they took my weapon and ganged up me. Things have only gotten worse.
I have told them that I will no longer play a “combat role” in this conflict or “protect corporate representatives”, and they have taken this as “violating a direct order”. I may be in jail or worse in the next 24 hours.
Please rally whoever you can, call whoever you can, bring as much attention to this as you can. I have no doubt that the military will bury me and hide the whole situation if they can. I’m in big trouble. I’m in the middle of Iraq, surrounded by people who are not on my side. Please help me. Please contact whoever you can, and tell them who I am, so I don’t “disappear”.
Eleonai Israel, JVB, Bco 1-149INF, Camp Victory, Baghdad Iraq
This is his e-mail address eleonai.israel@yahool.com
and his friend Crystal’s e-mail is crystal4cali@aol.com
Read the rest of this entry
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 9:46 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
Last night he was sprinting to his right after a gaper, and with the wide angle about a half a second off of the bat, it looked like he’d never be able to get there. The play ends up looking like so many putouts made by the Red Sox center fielder this season, only here he ends up stretched out completely parallel to the earth below, exerting every bit of energy he possibly could to meet that ball at the spot where its journey ended. The diving catch I’m describing from the 5th inning of last night’s game is one of the most beautiful plays I’ve ever seen. He simply cannot catch up to that ball in time…even in the replays it looks like an uncatchable ball. What makes it even more enjoyable though, is seeing Alex Cora within the frame of the field level shot of the catch, raising his right arm to signal an out before Crisp has even gone into his dive.
That angle in particular should make this one an automatic #1 top play on Sportscenter today – since there wasn’t any golf on television to knock it down to #2 – and Boston retains the best record in baseball for another day. As strong up the middle as any team in baseball, with Crisp giving Grady Sizemore a run for his money out in the field, it’s certainly a good time to be a Red Sox pitcher. Ten years ago the Sox never would have acquired a player with the attributes that Crisp possesses, and these plays he is able to make would have gone for extra bases, resulting in at least 3 extra games in the loss column by this point in the season. There’s no video that I know of available for embedding along with this post – MLB being the idiot fortress that it is – so you’ll either have to take my word for it or CLICK HERE – and select “Crisp’s diving catch”.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, sports at 3:35 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
Ben Shapiro (Orthodox Jew, very smart, controversial young writer) writes in a piece at Townhall.com – ‘The Radical Evil Of The Palestinian Arab Population‘:
The Palestinian Arab population is rotten to the core…in the end, the blame must lie with the Palestinian Arabs themselves. They have accepted their role with relish. They are as responsible for their government’s longstanding evil as the Germans were for the Nazis’.
If I were to dismiss his ideas based on the fact that he is an American Orthodox Jew with conservative nerve endings, then I’d probably qualify as a racist or anti-Semite. I’m probably both, though I strongly disagree with myself on that point. Mr. Shapiro appears to be extremely prejudiced in his own right. No doubt, he would also disagree.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way – I think it’s a good thing for everybody to read this article of his. Whether or not he’s ever spent time in a Palestinian community, his ignorance on this topic is extraordinary. The answer to ‘why’ his words are put together in such a way, I feel, is a defense mechanism. Americans are becoming more and more aware of the history behind apartheid in Palestine, and the suffering of innocent Palestinians has come more into focus.
The Israeli offensive in Lebanon provided a case study in how things work in that small corner of the world, and as a rule, the surrounding peoples who live outside the border of Israel are on thin ice before they’re even born. Rhetoric is all I have to offer today, as the many mechanisms of my plodding physiology are in need of jumper cables or some dry gas…maybe a couple of Daniel Carver’s answering machine messages, or a good old Osama mixed-tape will get me going.
There’s got to be something to gain in a purpose-driven immersion within the bounds of irrational hate-speech, and to get on the same page with Shapiro, I’m obviously going to need something equivalent to compare it with. Maybe the $22.00 I spent on a copy of Michael Savage’s acceptance speech of a Talker’s Magazine award will hold the key to understanding this uniquely deranged mind. And if all else fails, I’ll simply stop taking all medications and replace them with Wild Turkey. Couple days of that regimen should get me to where I need to be. So hold on Shapiro…I’ll be with you soon enough.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen at 12:45 PM GMT+4
8 Comments »
This is a good one.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video at 8:03 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
Sam is sick, and I’m running on fumes after a project for school kept me up until 4AM…so reading is working for me a lot more than writing or anything else. FYI – SiCKO got bootlegged, and is already up on a tracker with about 300 copies finished as of last night. It’ll be on GoogleVideo in no time I’d imagine. I’ll keep my eye out for it.
- One Massachusetts lawmaker, in her own words, who changed her vote on same-sex marriage
- A how-to guide for ‘Lucid Dreaming‘
- The Ten Most Common Photographic Mistakes
- Norton AntiVirus is A Virus (Author suggests free alternatives)
- Man calls for EMS, gets police Tasers
- Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime – Did you know that corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined?
- Matt Sanchez battles constantly over his wiki entry
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:48 PM GMT+4
3 Comments »
Best of Stewie
5 more below the fold
Read the rest of this entry
Posted by Al Swearengen as Comedy, Video at 1:09 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
Hallmark can kiss my ass…
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video at 8:40 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
Seymour Hersh’s latest essay is a case study on how the military has been turned into a dirty beast under George W. Bush’s watch. Focusing on retired Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba’s experience as the first investigator to focus on the abuse taking place at Abu Ghraib, we are provided a close-up look into the “shoot the messenger” m.o., and how the truth can only get you into hot water. Here are some excerpts:
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”
After General Taguba’s report is complete and has been delivered up the chain:
Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”
“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”
On his his findings:
The M.P.s, Taguba said, “were being literally exploited by the military interrogators. My view is that those kids”—even the soldiers in the photographs—“were poorly led, not trained, and had not been given any standard operating procedures on how they should guard the detainees.”
(From a Congressional Hearing) Senator Reed then asked Taguba, “Was it clear from your reading of the [Miller] report that one of the major recommendations was to use guards to condition these prisoners?” Taguba replied, “Yes, sir. That was recommended on the report.” At another point, after Taguba confirmed that military intelligence had taken control of the M.P.s following Miller’s visit, Levin questioned Cambone (Rumsfeld’s aide):
LEVIN: Do you disagree with what the general just said?
CAMBONE: Yes, sir.
LEVIN: Pardon?
CAMBONE: I do.
Taguba, looking back on his testimony, said, “That’s the reason I wasn’t in their camp—because I kept on contradicting them. I wasn’t about to lie to the committee. I knew I was already in a losing proposition. If I lie, I lose. And, if I tell the truth, I lose.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Military, politics at 2:31 AM GMT+4
2 Comments »
I don’t know much about Kaplan’s work, but have learned that he’s a right-winger who has earned himself an opposition site dedicated to him called ‘Lee Kaplan Watch‘. One Kaplan article I did read, basically blamed the Virginia Tech shootings on the presence of Muslims on college campuses. With that in mind, I can see how there might be a blog out there dedicated to his words. Here are a few of the posts you’ll find on the blog in question:
Kaplan sues the blogger in small claims court and wins a judgment for $7,500 in damages. (h/t Seeing the Forest)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice at 1:13 AM GMT+4
5 Comments »
Remembering the Peter Pace days…we’ll be celebrating this man’s storied career for months I’m sure, but in order to do this right, we’ve got to really delve into the details of what he was able to provide to our country. This first clip is a perfect example of that. The second one is just Tony Snow lying his ass off. Enjoy!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Military, Video, politics at 2:49 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
An Unreasonable Man:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics, History, Video, politics at 2:43 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
(Article) This is a bad sign. Regardless of what the inmate was convicted of or whether he’s guilty of the crime, everyone has the constitutional right to appeal their conviction to a higher court. In this case, a lower court judge gave the defendant’s attorney 17 days to file the paperwork for his appeal. Turns out that the federal deadline is only 14 days. The appeals court threw out the inmate’s appeal because it was turned in late.
So the matter before the Supreme Court is whether or not it’s fair to hold the defendant accountable for following instructions that happened to be incorrect. Is the basic right to appeal a conviction less sacred than the couple of days it was denied because of? What do you personally value more – a constitutional right or a bureaucracy’s deadline? How do you think most Americans would answer that question?
Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas felt that the bureaucratic deadline was more important than the inmate’s constitutional right to appeal his conviction.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice at 1:21 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
If you haven’t – You need to…”Food for thought so get a buffet plate ~ The lyrics are so phat you might gain weight”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Music, Video at 4:46 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
(Andrew Sullivan is rightly excited about this) A proud and historic day for the Commonwealth!
“In Massachusetts today, the freedom to marry is secure,” Gov. Deval Patrick said after the legislature voted 151 to 45 against the amendment, which needed 50 favorable votes to come before voters in a referendum in November 2008. The vote means that opponents would have to start from Square 1 to sponsor a new amendment, which could not get on the ballot before 2012. Massachusetts is the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, although five states allow civil unions or the equivalent. Thursday’s victory for same-sex marriage was not a foregone conclusion, especially after the amendment won first-round approval from the previous legislature in January, with 62 lawmakers supporting it.
A 17 vote swing occurred, which I attribute to gay marriage having been legal here already for a number of years and thus far, none of the dire consequences that are warned of whenever this issue is brought up have actually been experienced. The evidence is on Massachusetts’ side, and with each year that passes, the legitimacy of what we’ve established here will speak for itself! Facts v. Fear ~
The event prompted me to dig up something I wrote in July of ‘04 “Gay Rights and The System“
Posted by Al Swearengen as History, politics at 4:32 PM GMT+4
No Comments »
There were at least 1001 ways my brother and I would riff on this public service announcement while growing up. It never gets old:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Comedy, Video at 2:04 AM GMT+4
No Comments »
(h/t TPM Muckraker) Four years of Latin for me in high school didn’t put me anywhere near the level John Sarbanes is communicating from, but it was pretty cool to see this and know what they were talking about. Laurita Doan thought that she was smarter than everyone else in the room….
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words, politics at 10:08 PM GMT+4
4 Comments »
