I protest.

Outrage overload.

Maybe I should have an "all of the above" category. Today it is difficult for me to write simply because there is so incredibly much to be angry about.

First off, there's the takeover of the media by the big media conglomerates (link added). The FCC is considering rescinding regulations that limit the number of radio and television stations a particular company can own in any single market. This would have the effect of having virtually all mass media be in the hands of a few very large corporations. Fox News on an even more massive scale.

Second, the idiot-in-chief carefully not claiming "victory" in Iraq, since "victory" would mean that we would actually have to follow the Geneva conventions as the victor and occupier of the defeated nation. Which means we would have to release the POWs, for one thing. Can't have that, can we. Meanwhile, the so-called "liberal" media slobberingly report every minute detail of said idiot's landing on the aircraft carrier. Here's a picture of the moron, busy acting the idiot he is. If you look closely, you can see the strings.

Next is the suppression of a report of the failures leading up to the 9/11 attacks. They even want to reclassify parts that are already public knowledge! This is insane.

As if those weren't enough, there's the US Department of State Terrorism Report (via Beautiful Horizons and CalPundit). The report itself isn't so bad, it's that it will almost certainly be used to make the Administration "look good" by carefully reporting certain parts but not others. Yeah, terrorism dropped. No, it didn't drop in the Middle East, virtually all of the drop was in Colombia. Terrorist attacks in Asia increased. And attacks in the United States stayed at the usual level of zero.

Then there's the segregated prom in Georgia. Lots of bloggers are picking this one up, as well they should. This is truly a giant leap backwards. Of course it's Georgia.

Plus this story, about the end of the Fourth Amendment. How would you like to be having a nice Indian dinner with a friend and suddenly have a gun shoved in your face by these — these — fascists.

Oh, yeah, and today isn't International Labor Day, it's Loyalty Day. Time to go fly a flag upside down, I think. Or burn one. I'll be loyal to that damned bastard just as soon as he starts actually upholding his oath of office. The one that he as obviously conveniently forgotten about.

And on top of everything else, the economy sucks hot rocks, and is only getting worse. I have been out of work for over three months, now. Hopefully something will appear soon. Fortunately, finances aren't a problem at the moment. Others aren't so lucky. You know what the solution is, though, don't you? Yes, tax cuts for the rich!

Fuck George W. Bush and the horse he rode in on. It's just too bad that the pilot of that plane today didn't have a sudden attack of overwhelming patriotism and crash the thing into the sea.

But that would be wrong, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it?

Fear itself.

I saw Bowling For Columbine a few days ago and was impressed by Moore's message. If you've seen the movie, you know that he points out that the chief difference between culture in the United States and in other Western countries (including Canada) is the climate of fear in which so many of us live. Fear that is promulgated and strengthened by the mass media in the name of "ratings."

This interests me because it goes along with something that I've known for some time. "All we have to fear is fear, itself." In the wake of the events of 9/11, fear has been the state of mind in the United States. It is fear that enabled the passage of the "USA PATRIOT" Act, it is fear that enables Ashcroft to "detain" people like Mike Hawash, Jose Padilla and many, many others, without charging them and often without allowing them any recourse whatsoever.

It is fear that lets Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Bush and the rest get away with their lies and deceit and with their ongoing destruction of our civil rights.

The horrible fact is, though, that a fear of terrorist attack in the United States is almost completely senseless, particularly when that fear causes us to harm ourselves in the long term for what we perceive to be short-term "safety."

The fear is misplaced.

Many countries have lived with the reality of terrorist attack for decades. The United States is in the position of almost never having had attacks on its own soil. Three notable attacks in the last ten years, and one of those was committed by US citizens. Yet we tremble in fear of people with swarthy skin and Middle Eastern accents.

Read the terrorism report. In it you will see that the whole of North America has only had a handful of incidents in recent years. The chance of being killed by a terrorist is quite a bit less than the chance of being struck by lightning. And consider this: If a group (of "terrorists") tries to highjack a plane these days, what will happen to them? Will the passengers go quietly to their doom like sheep to the slaughter, knowing that their deaths may also cause the deaths of thousands of others? Or will they act as did the passengers of United Flight 93, who wrested control of the aircraft from the terrorists after they realized what was happening? I have said before that I believe that such a group will be torn to pieces, as those passengers' anger, frustration and fear in the wake of 9/11 finds a focus at last. Someone who tries to highjack a plane now will be doomed to fail most miserably. And the plane will almost certainly not crash, as the highjacker will never actually have control of it, unlike the case of Flight 93.

There are a few people who want us to be afraid. Some want to get good ratings so they can sell air time to advertisers at high rates. Some want to advance their own agendas by using such fear as an excuse to whittle away at legislation they dislike. And some simply want to stay in power: George W. Bush has scheduled the Republican National Convention to overlap the third anniversary of 9/11/2001.

Why should we be afraid? We are in no more danger today than we were on September 10, 2001. In some ways we are in less danger, in fact, since we now know that there are such dangers. Knowing, we can avoid the danger or act to prevent it, not by allowing our government to rob us of our liberty, but by taking responsibility for ourselves.

Even given the situation on board one of those doomed flights on that day, I could not be stopped by a box cutter. Yes, he could cut me, but he couldn't kill me unless I stood still and let him. And that is something I would not and will not do. Why should I be afraid, when there is so much I can do? Sure, it's tough to deal with a suicide bomber, but there's a reason those people chose to use jets rather than bombs. The United States is a much, much bigger place than Israel, even than Europe. A single suicide bomber in New York isn't going to have much of an impact (beyond shock and anger) in Los Angeles, Chicago or Houston.

Why should we give up our freedom to be "safe?" Are we sheep who need to be looked after by some "shepherd?" I certainly know of some people who would be very happy to take on that role, people like Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and many, many others. But we are not sheep. I thought that being an "American" meant a little more than being "taken care of." I thought it meant that we take responsibility for ourselves rather than placing that responsibility into the hands of others. I thought it mean taking care of ourselves, not being taken care of.

Everyone is afraid. White people in particular are afraid of every kind of ethnicity, particular black, Hispanic and, these days, Middle Eastern. And the fear is baseless. Despite what you might see on television, black people are just like you. I can walk down Normandie Avenue just like Michael Moore did, and not hear a single gunshot or see a single angry "gang member." Oh, by the way, I'm a white male. Hell, when I make even a small effort to just fit in, to see those around me as people and not as black, Hispanic, Asian or whatever, those people seem to appreciate it. I suspect sometimes that it is because I'm a white man that they do so, that such behavior is relatively rare.

Remember: The next time you see a person with a skin color different from yours, from a different country or with a different accent, bear in mind that they are just like you are. There is nothing to fear, no matter what Rupert Murdoch might want you to believe! Murdoch wants to make money and that is all he cares about. You and I and the guy on the street corner are just trying to live our lives. If we put our fear away and just remember that there is no reason at all to be afraid, we'll be happier and the Murdochs of the world will be furious.

A fearful populace is a compliant populace. I think the events of the last eighteen months has proven that well enough. It is time we stopped being afraid of our own shadows. A person who is too afraid to take a risk is a person who has no life.

Michael Moore is right. It is our fear that makes us a violent people, it is our fear that has robbed us of many rights we are accustomed to taking for granted and it is our fear that has caused the horror in Iraq right now. Tell me, tell me, why should we be afraid? Because the television tells us to be afraid? Are you an idiot, who can't think for himself, or do you have a mind of your own? Do you believe what anyone tells you, or do you decide for yourself? So why do you allow someone else to tell you that you should be afraid?

What is there to be afraid of? As Walt Kelly once said through his character Porky Pine: "Don't take life too serious, it ain't nohow permanent."

Every one of us will die. Guaranteed. I, the one who writes this, and you, the one who reads it. We will both be dead, sooner or later. Some will die tomorrow, some in a few years, some in a few decades, but we will all die. It doesn't matter whether you choose to believe and accept it or if you try to deny it and hide it from yourself. Death has a funny way of getting the last word and it has been one hundred percent successful so far. So, given that death is absolutely inevitable and unavoidable, what the hell are you afraid of? Yeah, it sucks, but I don't recall anyone giving me any guarantees beforehand, nor do you, I suspect.

Believe me, I know what it is like to be afraid. Living with depression, I often am forced to fight sourceless, irrational fear. Maybe that experience gives me a little more ability to deal with it, I don't know. I do know, though, that regular fears are a cinch to deal with after having to cope with biologically-based neurochemical fear. If you don't have depression or one of the other fun disorders, you've got it easy. You can actually choose to not be afraid. All you have to do is believe that there's nothing to fear. The nice thing about this situation is that, as I've mentioned, there actually is nothing to fear.

And even if there is something to fear after all, we must still not be afraid. "All we have to fear is fear itself." Fear paralyzes us, it robs us of our ability to cope with reality. Our coping ability is most needed when there really is something to fear. So what do we do? Do we submit to fear and thereby concede our control over the situation, or do we overcome our fear, set it aside, and take control of the situation, at least as it concerns us? When we are afraid, we are unable to make considered decisions, we can't think clearly, we become confused and disoriented. When we set that fear aside, our thoughts become more clear, we relax, we are able once again to think before making decisions.

Fear causes mistakes. Often very, very tragic ones, like the shootings of Iraqi protesters over the last few days. The only way to avoid tragedy is to not be afraid. Think for a bit about the situation in which those soldiers find themselves, then consider your own situation and decide whether you should really be afraid.

I've gone on long enough for now. At some point I'll probably try to order my thoughts a little more, but I've made the point I wanted to make. It's as simple as "fear bad, fearless good."

Don't be afraid. Be fearless. Do you want to be a good, patriotic American? Stop being afraid. If you're afraid, the terrorists have succeeded in their intent; that is why, after all, they are called "terrorists." If you're not afraid, you can actually do something about your situation. You can take control of your life.

Don't be afraid. There is nothing to fear.

A seriously different perspective.

Check out Electronic Intifada, a Palestinian-oriented news site. I ran across it through a link to the article "'I was a human shield': An Israeli visits ISM in Rafah," a good and pretty gripping view of what it's like to be in front of the guns, rather than behind them. The rest of the site has both good and bad reporting; use the appropriate grains of salt when reading it. At worst, though, it's a good way to see how the Palestinian side sees things.

The Palestinians are in an impossible situation, caught between their manipulation by the rest of the Arab world and the aggression of the Israeli state. Regardless of your view of the rightness or wrongness of the conflict, the fact remains that people are suffering terribly and few seem to care. And before anyone accuses me of "supporting terrorism," I'm not. As far as I can tell, the acts of terrorists have little, if anything, to do with the suffering in places like Rafah. Like most everywhere else, these people are just trying to live.

This conflict is a classic example of the problem with the philosophy of "an eye for an eye." Someone must decide when to stop, else everyone will be blind.

History, politics and war!

Billmon over at the Whiskey Bar has a great piece about dialectic in American politics, from the founding of the US to the present: The Dao of American Politics, Part I.

Part II is here.

Go read it!

Take the Newsweek poll.

Via Hesiod: A Newsweek poll: After the War.

Go let them know what you think, okay?

Winnie Mandela.

I've wondered about Winnie Mandela's situation for a long time. I knew that she held the torch while her husband was in prison, but there was still much I didn't know, and I've always been kind of skeptical (where I had an opinion at all) of the many accusations thrown at her. Well, the Mac Diva has this to say: Winnie Mandela's sentence: Revisited. It's an interesting and very informative piece, particularly for someone who, like myself, doesn't know a whole lot about the recent history of South Africa beyond what has appeared in the mass media. Bravo.

An open letter to Gary Hart.

Gary Hart has a recent article up at his blog, Democracy Dies Behind Closed Doors . It's pretty interesting, particularly to me, since I've been saying a lot of the same things for a long time, now. For what it's worth, I wrote the following in the comments for that entry:

Maybe he'll read it, or maybe someone else will read it and take the hint. Or maybe not. I felt I had to say it, though.

No Hart for Presidency.

Apparently, Hart won't be running: Hart Decides Against 2004 White House Bid.

Too bad. Here's hoping he throws his weight behind one of those who are running.

Cultural differences and human similarities.

Conrad over at The Gweilo Diaries takes serious issue with an assertion of mine in his post Cultural Differences. The assertion he has a problem with is this one:

Well, hell. I really didn't expect that kind of response (hell, I didn't expect someone as conservative as Conrad to even read my blog). Since he has made all of these assertions, though, I guess I'll respond.

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm a software engineer living in a beach city that is a suburb of Los Angeles. I've lived here for some fifteen years, having moved here from Texas. In school I took a minor in psychology and it has been a major interest of mine ever since. Finally, while I've never lived overseas as Conrad does, I have been to China a couple of times and am in fact married to a woman from HangZhou. No, I'm not an expert, but I'm hardly uninformed, either.

Sure, there are differences between cultures. There are even differences between individuals within cultures. Culture, though, is a thin veneer that provides the rules of behavior within a society. Certainly those rules can seem very surprising to a member of another culture, and sometimes the rules are very hard to understand when one is accustomed to unconscious adherence to a quite different set of rules. I know this very well indeed, since I've had to understand a lot about my wife's native culture in order to understand some of her behaviors and the reasons for them. Culture, however, is learned. There are many, many things about being human that are not learned, and it is to those I was referring when I said "they are just like you are."

What are some of those unlearned behaviors? Well, a set of behaviors that spring immediately to mind are those surrounding human gregariousness. All human cultures have some form of family. While not all may reflect the so-called "nuclear family" of the West (one man, one woman, children), they all have some social grouping that is recognizable as a "family" to virtually all other cultures. The fact that there are, in fact, rules for social behavior makes us alike, as well. Not the rules themselves, they can vary widely, but the fact that there are rules. As it happens, some of the rules are more or less the same across cultures. Respect of elders, some hierarchy of authority, specific gender roles and others. Details may vary, but the fact that there are rules is a constant.

Another constant across cultures is the desire for and valuation of children. Not in general of course, many cultures (such as my own) tend to devalue children in the mass, but in individual cases this is not true. Individuals may vary, but in general healthy people want and value their own children. This is as true among the Zulu as it is in Manhattan, as true in Tokyo as it is in London. The outpouring of support for that poor Iraqi boy who lost almost his entire family and both of his arms cut across cultures because the report made an individual out of that child, which appealed to the potential parent in all most of us.

Then there are all of the basic human needs. Food, shelter, clothing, health, sleep, sex. Conrad should be able to relate to the last, right enough. The very fact that he is successful in his forays into the nightlife of various Asian cities reflects the fact that his sexual desires are shared by those whose cultures are different than his. Besides sex, though, we all need enough to eat, somewhere safe to sleep and someplace to keep the rain, snow or sun off. We all need our health, as well, so we can continue to meet those other needs.

This leads to Abraham Maslow's needs hierarchy. This is one of the bases of modern psychology and one of the first things one learns when studying the science. Maslow outlined a hierarchy of human needs ranging from the strictly physical to psychological needs such as self-respect and the respect of others. While I don't entirely agree that all of Maslow's needs are common across all cultures, many of those needs certainly are universal. Being part of a community, being respected, being safe, all are as true in Africa as they are in Europe, as common in Hong Kong as they are in Sao Paulo.

It is easy to look at somone and only see the superficial, the surface. There has been and continues to be a lot of tragic misunderstanding due to simple differences of culture. Looking past culture can be difficult, sometimes extraordinarily difficult. For myself, remembering that my wife is often motivated strongly by "face," the set of rules in her culture that govern social standing, is one of the more difficult. "Face" is a concept that is quite foreign to those of us who have grown up in a Western culture. Fortunately for the future of my marriage, though, it is possible for me to learn that concept and, if necessary, follow it, since it is relatively superficial. It is merely one of the rules of her culture. When it comes to being human, however, there is no difference at all.

Why did Saudis fly the planes into those buildings and not Swedes? Not because Saudis are different from Swedes, but because the circumstances of the Saudis, the culture they were a part of, led to it. In similar conditions, the Swedes might very well do similar things. Why do Chinese children fill the best universities in the US while Mexican children do not? Because Chinese cultural values lead to the very strong desire, even obsession, to succeed in school, whereas Mexican cultural values do not. I might add that the American culture isn't too great about that, either. Despite our children being a part of American culture, though, my wife and I plan to inculcate in them some of the Chinese values. If Mexican culture were such that it shared the Chinese value of hard work in academic pursuits, the Mexican children would do as well as the Chinese. It's not the people, it's the culture. It's not that people are different, it's that the rules by which they live vary.

Conrad, you mistake superficial cultural differences for essential differences between people. You're right, cultures are different, but that doesn't mean that the people themselves are also different. The people are the same, and if you can look past the culture you can see that. In my (admittedly limited) experience, what has amazed me has not been the differences, although those have been obvious enough. It has, instead, been the similarities that have left me shaking my head in awe at just how alike human beings are, at just how much we all have in common with one another.

So I stick by my assertion that those people from different countries, from different cultures, with odd accents and skin color, are indeed just like we are. I think I have all the proof I need that this is true. And, therefore, there is no need to be afraid of them, which was my point in the first place.

UPDATE (May 7, 14:55 PDT): I fixed up the paragraph about Maslow's Needs Hierarchy. This thing is getting enough attention that leaving it like it was was getting a little embarassing. Thanks for all the kind words from you folks, by the way.

Whom to support?

Now that my personal favorite, Gary Hart, has officially decided not to run, I have to decide just which of the current field deserves my support. I don't think that any of them can favorably compare with Hart, particularly in their level of experience. I also really liked what Hart had to say, and I honestly am not hearing the same kind of things from the current pack.

As far as those who are still around, I really like Dean and Edwards the best. I lean more towards Dean, as he strikes me as having some amount of real integrity and as willing to state his positions and then stand behind them. Unfortunately, I don't think that he goes quite far enough. Edwards, on the other hand, I respect because he has made a concerted effort to be present for the various votes in the Senate, unlike a couple of his colleagues. Putting personal agendas aside to attend to one's duty is a Good Thing in my book.

I definitely know that I would sooner eat rat than vote for Leiberman, he's just a lighter version of Bush. Nothing I've heard about Kerry convinces me that he would be a better choice than either Dean or Edwards, not to mention the fact that he has been missing Senate votes. I don't know a lot about Gephardt beyond his reputation and what I remember about his history. Offhand I don't particularly care for him as a potential President.

I guess at this point it's just to early to decide. I don't have enough data and I haven't seen them in action enough yet. I just hope one of them will actually impress me as much as Hart impressed me.

Maybe I'll readdress my "Hart open letter" to Dean and Edwards...

Bravo Bernie!

Independent Vermont Representative Bernie Sanders has an op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times, Pulling FBI's Nose Out of Your Books. He has a number of good things to say but what really lights my fire is that he has apparently introduced the "Freedom to Read Protection Act." This bill, as I understand it, is intended to prevent the FBI from being able to force libraries and bookstores to produce their records of customers' or patrons' activity without a court order and without the possibility of legislative review. The formal title of the bill is "To amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to exempt bookstores and libraries from orders requiring the production of any tangible things for certain foreign intelligence investigations, and for other purposes." It is H.R. 1157 and has no fewer than 81 cosponsors (among whom, I'm sorry to say, my representative, Jane Harman, is not to be found).

Sanders was one of the very few to vote against the so-called "USA PATRIOT" Act. This new legislation should not be necessary, since that Act should never have been introduced, much less passed, but since it was, this bill is a step in the direction of fixing things. A small step, but a step.

Write your Representative and urge them to support this bill.

Okay, okay, okay.

If Kieran Healy is doing it, then I guess I can do it, too. So I took Dante's Inferno Test. Here's how I did:

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Limbo, eh? Hey, I get to hang out with all the fun people! And I do mean all the fun people.

Why unions are important.

This article explains perfectly just why unions aren't just a good idea, they are essential for workers: Ravings of a Textual Deviant: Call Me Norma.

There's no such thing as a union for software engineers, but fortunately we tend to have the power to negotiate on our own. We're rare and individually important enough that companies realize that they have to work at pleasing us or we'll walk. (Although at the moment, with Mr. Moron's economy the way it is, that's not true, and those who are hiring know it.) This isn't true for a grad student. As far as a university (both staff and faculty) is concerned, a grad student is completely replaceable, so why should they worry about pleasing them.

A union is pretty much the only effective way to fight this kind of thinking.

Evil and America's place in the world.

Jeanne D'arc at Body and Soul has posted an article containing the entirety of a speech at Rice University by former diplomat John Brady Kiesling entitled American Moral Capital and the Misprojection of U.S. Power. Go read it. Right now. I'll wait.

This is the kind of thing that I wish to hear from the Democrat Presidential candidates. Kiesling lays it all out and never flinches from describing what the United States leadership has done as "lies and hypocrisy." He goes so far as to term them "evil," in fact, and I have to say that despite my dislike of the good/evil dichotomy, I find myself wanting to accept that term.

Kiesling calls on all of us to "stand up to the schoolyard bullies in Washington, not on partisan political terms but to defend threatened national values and interests. We should demand from the American electorate, from the American business community, from the academic world, a foreign policy based on understanding that the world's interests and our interests are inseparable. America's security is enhanced by a clear, strong, and universal system of international law, policed by strong international institutions that we dominate through a generous allocation of our energy, skill, funding, intelligence-gathering capability, and military prowess."

It is up to us to fight the bastards in Washington. It will be easy to defeat them, truth and integrity will always defeat lies and hypocrisy. The only problem is that we need a leader, one who is not too timid to go toe-to-toe with those who would pervert our system of government to serve themselves.

Interesting news for everyone who has a mom.

It turns out that we all carry a bit of our mothers in us and vice versa: CNN.com - Moms, kids carry one another's cells. This has fascinating potential implications, not only for autoimmune diseases as mentioned in the article), but for the biology of human beings and of mammals in general. It turns out that we're all chimerae!

The right to be observed.

TalkLeft has an article about the so-called "Moussaoui fix" passed by the Senate yesterday: Senate Approves Greater Secret Search and Wiretap Powers. The bill is S.113 and passed 90-4 with six not voting.

This legislation is part of what was originally "Patriot Act II," of which I wrote on April 2. As Ashcroft threatened then, the legislation is being reintroduced piecemeal. According to the New York Times (via TalkLeft), the overwhelming support for the bill "was the result of a compromise in which Senator Hatch pulled his request to repeal the sunset provisions of the Patriot Act." So, basically, our Senators, both yours and mine, unless you live in West Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa or Illinois, sold us out with this legislation by allowing Hatch to cave on the repeal of the sunset provisions of the original Act. Which, of course, can always be reintroduced down the line.

Now, I'm no senator and maybe I'm just uninformed, but doesn't this sound incredibly stupid for people who at least nominally support civil rights?

Another view.

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy has a very different take on the FISA amendment that I disparaged in my last post. He seems to think that it is on balance a good thing. I have to admit that I don't know enough about the subject to make a fair assessment. (Although I do know that I dislike the way Hatch manipulated the process, even though I know that it's politics as usual in the Senate.)

Kerr ends by criticizing the term "sweeping" when characterizing the powers granted by the so-called "USA PATRIOT" Act. I don't know, maybe "sweeping" is a slight overstatement, but I don't really think so. I really don't think that Moussaoui, Padilla or Hawash would think it an overstatement, either; they all have personally experienced the consequences of the powers the Act granted to the Justice Department.

Dirty Bombs.

Nick at The Agonist points us to this article at the Washington Post: Seven Nuclear Sites Looted. As Nick says, "If so, there are potentially significant consequences for public health and the spread of materials to build a nuclear or radiological bomb." Um, yeah. From the article:

The Independent has a related story that illustrates a different view of the situation, in which local villagers may be paying for U.S. indifference and incompetence for decades, with their lives and the lives of their children.

As for the rest of us, let us just hope that organized terrorists haven't absconded with sufficient material for the much-feared "dirty bomb." We might recall that a certain Jose Padilla has been incarcerated for over a year on the mere suspicion that he intended to build such a bomb. As it was the duty of Rumsfeld and Bush (among others) to see that exactly this sort of thing did not happen, I say that they should have the cells on either side of Padilla's.

"Clean" bombs.

And then there's this little gem, also via The Agonist: Senate panel votes to lift ban on low-yield nuclear weapons. So, we tell Pakistan and India (not to mention the rest of the world) not to develop nuclear weapons, while at the same time we return to developing them ourselves! Here's hoping that this thing will die a miserable death in the full Senate. This is another that one should write one's Senators about, particularly if one's Senators are Republican.

George W. Mussolini

As the Apostropher writes, It would be funny if it weren't so scary. He points us at this article at the Information Clearing House, The Other "F" Word: "Chosen by the Grace of God"? In it, Ben Tripp sets the case for calling our current leadership "fascist." He does it in a humorous fashion but his conclusions are pretty frightening. As he says,

"Son of unimaginable privilege." That's pretty accurate, yep. Of course, I do have to point out that it's not entirely true that W. was wearing a military uniform. Although it is the most uniform-like outfit that any serving President has ever worn, strictly speaking the flight suit was a safety outfit, required by the fact that he put his safety on the line when he did the hop from San Diego to the Lincoln in that jet. Of course, that wouldn't have been necessary if he had done what everyone else had done and taken the damned helicopter. Instead, though, he used the power of his position for a thrillride.

This doesn't matter, though. The man is at best a fool in the thrall of fascists and at worst a fascist himself. I personally lean more toward the former interpretation, but that doesn't mean that I don't think the man should be removed, as quickly and effectively as possible. Fascism is what those in the White House are practicing and fascists are what they are. Whether it's Rove in the background or Bush in the foreground, we need to remove them.

And of course, this is all without mentioning W. going AWOL from his National Guard duty.

Watch your wallet.

Chris at Interesting Times quotes "DrFrankLives" from the Daily KOS comments section. That commenter suggests the following Democrat campaign advertisement:

I can add nothing to that.

The words of a child.

Charlotte Aldebron is a sixth grader from Presque Isle, Maine. Bean at Alas, a blog writes about her in his article Listen to the Children. Charlotte wrote an essay, "What the American Flag Stands For" for her English class. In it, she damns with a few simple words those who hold a piece of cloth to have more value than a human being.

Not content with that essay, though, last October she gave a peace rally speech in Augusta, Maine. Read her speech. From an adult it would be moving. From a twelve-year-old, it gives me goosebumps.

She adds the children in Iraq, who at the time were suffering and who now are suffering even more. She continues,

And more and more. She concludes,

I'm afraid that her speeches have only just begun. Maybe one day the adults in her world will begin to hear her.

I doubt it, though. The sick feeling I have is that no one who really matters cares, and that somehow the Bush junta will continue to cling to power, using its usual lies and distortion, while the American people go back to sleep.

No WMD, eh? What a surprise.

Via the road to surfdom: Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq. The 75th Exploitation Task Force is giving up its attempts to find those "weapons of mass destruction" that "justified" our invasion of Iraq. They have found nothing.

What, you don't mean that Bush could have been lying to us, do you?

Emma at Notes on the Atrocities also mentions this story. She goes a bit further, though, in saying,

It disgusts me that the news media are pretty much ignoring the story. Right this minute on the CNN website main page, there's a big article on the "Dr. Germ" arrest and not one mention at all of the failure of the search for "weapons of mass destruction." Not one.

No "Klingon interpreter" need apply.

Bob Harris over at This Modern World points out that the "Klingon interpreter" story making the rounds is an urban legend. Apparently, Seth Finkelstein at kuro5hin.org has already written about it: "Klingon Language Interpreter" Urban Legend.

It was a JOKE, folks!

Hate crimes.

Oliver at The Liquid List asks Rick Santorum, Are You Listening? He is referring to an article in the New York Daily News about a fifteen-year-old from New Jersey who will not see her sixteenth birthday. It seems Shakia Gunn and her friends had been hanging out in Greenwich Village on Saturday night and they were on their way home. They were waiting for a bus in Newark when they were approached by two men, whom they "rebuffed . . . by telling them they were gay," according to the police. The men became "enraged" and attacked the group. Shakia was stabbed and died at University Hospital.

What is the moral to this story? If you're a woman, don't refuse the unwanted sexual sexual advances of a male stranger? Don't be gay?

I find myself wanting to blame the city of Newark, but I suppose those men may have come from elsewhere. It astounds and sickens me, though, that a girl should be murdered because she indicated that she would rather fuck a woman than some asshole off the street. I oppose the death penalty, but I certainly don't oppose public floggings, if the crime is serious enough. Catch them, flog them publically, run them through a few sensitivity training courses, and let them go. Maybe after tattooing the word "murderer" on their foreheads.

Can you tell that I'm angry?

Uncle Karl (no, not Marx).

C.J. Silverio asks Who is really running the US? She finds the answer in a Howard Kurtz article in the Washington post, but he's quoting James C. Moore in his op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times: Karl Rove: Counting Votes While the Bombs Drop. Moore asserts:

These are pretty harsh words but to me they make a lot of sense. I've known for some time that someone has been pulling Bush's strings; he is just too dumb to do what he's done on his own. (President or not, he's as dumb as a box or rocks; he reminds me a lot of some people I've known who have been good at what they do but what they do is extremely limited, things like moving furniture or working on an assembly line, and beyond their limitations they are lost. I would feel sorry for him were he not a child of privilege and President of the United States.) Karl Rove is the puppeteer. I'm certain that he shares this task with others from time to time, but it certainly appears that the White House dances to Rove's tune.

Why is this bad? Well, for one thing, we didn't elect Rove. It bothers me a lot that a person with so much influence is hardly known by the American people and is essentially immune to Constitutional checks on his behavior. And I hope I'm wrong about that second one. Regardless, no one man should have as much influence on the Presidency as Rove does. The Senate (for what it's worth) confirmed the members of Bush's cabinet, but Rove holds no cabinet position, no position at all in the government, and is therefore responsible to no one.

And since almost anyone over the age of twelve can easily outthink and manipulate Bush, this means that Karl Rove can do pretty much anything he wants.

Until we stop him, anyway.

Hit 'em where it hurts!

Hesiod points us at this article in the Miami Herald: Miami-Dade United Way withdraws funds from Boy Scouts:

Apparently the South Florida Council of the Boy Scouts agreed to this, but the national organization refused. The national organization is based in Dallas, Texas.

I knew there was a reason I swore I would never live in Texas again.

The Miami Herald is now running a poll asking "Should the Miami-Dade United Way withhold funding from the Boy Scouts for failing to require scout masters to attend gay sensitivity training?" At the moment I write this, "No" is winning, 348 votes to 217. Go fix that.

Update, May 14, 19:44: As apostropher points out in comments, "yes" is now winning and in fact has picked up two more votes since he posted his comment: 497 to 407. Hey, it worked! Good work, folks!

We can remember that for you wholesale.

Slashdot mentions a Guardian story that is based on a New Scientist story (phew!) about the world's first brain prosthesis. The hippocampus is, among other things, the part of the brain that allows short term memories to become long term memories. People with damage to the hippocampus, say by a stroke, can no longer form long-term memories. Well, a team lead by Dr. Theodore Berger at USC has developed a "silicon hippocampus." According to the New Scientist article, they devised a mathematical model of how the hippocampus works, designed a chip from that model and will now connect the chip to a living rat brain, in vitro at first and then later in vivo. Read the article, it is fascinating.

This is, um, mindblowing. I have experienced the state of losing the ability to form long term memories, certain anaesthetics (the so-called "amnesiacs") work this way. A couple of years ago I had an endoscopy in which I was given such a drug. The interesting bit is that I remember the first few seconds of the procedure and then, with no gap, I am being wheeled to the recovery room. I am awake and alert and am speaking. I don't remember what I was saying when I became aware, but the first thing I do remember saying is, "that was fast!" This might be something like the experience of someone with hippocampal damage who received this prosthesis. Only theirs would be much, much more intense and profound.

This is a big step, as well, toward being able to make other neural repairs. What if we could provide prostheses for other parts of the brain, so as to help stroke or accident victims? This then raises the question of identity. If part of the thing I think with, the thing that is me in the most basic, intimate sense, is silicon, what am I? Perhaps we will have to adjust our concept of "identity," not to mention that of what it is to be human. Very challenging questions, but also very useful ones. These questions may become truly meaningful in a concrete (rather than philosophical) sense for the first time.

(Bonus points for the person who knows where I got the title of this entry.)

Nothing to see here.

I've been thinking about some stuff over the last few days, but I'm not yet ready to write about it. My thoughts aren't quite coherent enough to commit to the written word. The thoughts have to do with things like the current debacle that is Iraq, the lies that our leaders are still feeding us, the walkout of the Democrats from the Texas House, some email correspondence I've been conducting regarding my "Fear Itself" entry, Ashcroft's latest attacks on our civil liberties and a few other things.

I'm still incredibly frustrated and angry about the state of our government but I need to think all this out a bit more before I go into details. Maybe tomorrow...

Commentary.

I don't know what category to put this under, so "politics" is as good as any.

I've been having a couple of conversations over the last few days, one in the commentary of my recent Hate Crimes entry and another in email, related to the Fear Itself entry from May 2. Both are, as one might expect, from people who are apparently pretty far to the right.

The interesting thing about both is that while I'm more or less matter-of-factly asserting my opinion while saying nothing at all about theirs, they are painting me as a "leftist" or are putting words in my mouth. One, Matt, admitted in email that he assumed that I was "for civilian disarmament" (i.e. gun control), "being as how your[sic] a lefist." He had attacked me over my stance on gun control, when I hadn't even mentioned it, nor have I talked about it in this weblog at all! He was particularly incensed, though, at my "appeal to authority" with respect to Michael Moore's movie. An appeal I never made, in fact. He also challenges my thesis about people being fearful based on his personal experience. That challenge has merit in that it does deal directly with what I wrote, but why didn't he bring it up first rather than erecting all these straw men? Ultimately, though, he says, "Really, what would you do if you were attacked? If you know the answer, then I can't see the point of being afraid." Which was exactly the point of my original article: There is no point in being afraid.

The other, Michael, is reacting to a single, throwaway line in the Hate Crimes entry that was written in the heat of anger. I wrote, "Catch them, flog them publically, run them through a few sensitivity training courses, and let them go. Maybe after tattooing the word "murderer" on their foreheads." He took off on the "let them go" part of that. Interestingly, I had expected people to go after me for the "public flogging" part, since flogging has been almost universally condemned in the West. But, no, however he feels about flogging, he apparently thinks that letting them go afterwards is much more important. In comments (which you can read for yourself if you're interested), I throw out an off-the-cuff recidivism rate of eighty percent, which he challenged, so I went to the DoJ statistics site. They have published a study of recidivism rates from 1983 to 1994 (and I have no reason to believe that rates have changed to any statistically significant extent since then) in which they show an average rearrest rate of 67.5 percent. Now, they do show an average reconviction rate of 46.9 percent, which compares to Michael's assertion of "30 to 50 percent," but I have no way of knowing whether this is really what he meant, since he gives no source other than "just by Googling." Hmm.

As to making unwarranted assumptions and putting words in my mouth (not to mention actively insulting me), Michael beats Matt by lots. Michael calls my characterization of incarceration as worse than useless (which I think it is) "beyond the normal bounds of stupidity" (and I'm sorry, Michael, this shows no respect whatsoever). He claims that my "solution to recidivism" is to, as he says, "INCREASE CRIMINALS' OPPORTUNITIES TO COMMIT NEW CRIMES." His caps, not mine.

He then appeals to authority, citing himself as something of an expert in the field, having worked as a "criminal defense attorney, including stints in public defenders offices." He claims to know whereof he speaks from personal experience whereas I am "spouting theory divorced from facts and experience."

Hmm, again.

Well, I could point out that even a thirty percent rate of reconviction (getting away from the term "recidivism" which isn't specific enough) could be considered failure, and no source I've found gives a figure that low. Sure, people convicted of some crime may not be able to victimize others outside the prison while they are incarcerated, but after they get out, well, there we go again. It's true that I don't believe that simple incarceration is the answer, so to that narrow extent Michael was right when he put words in my mouth. However, he failed to consider that I might have a couple of other ideas. Also, Michael's ad hominem attack notwithstanding, I'm also not wholly without knowledge in this area. While he may have been a defense attorney, I suspect that he has devoted little, if any, time to the study of psychology or psychopathology. I'm not a professional in the field, but I do have a strong lay knowledge of it. At least I know enough to know when something isn't working well and to have some idea of how to go about fixing it. One start might be to read about studies like this one to find more effective methods of preventing recidivism (in the general sense). As long as we as a society view crime from the Puritanical perspective of something that should be simply punished, rather than from the more pragmatic view of it as a symptom of a treatable problem, we will continue to propagate it. We become an accessory to crime; rather than preventing it, we ensure that it continues even in cases in which it need not.

But that is really beside the point. My annoyance is with the fact that both of these people, Matt and Michael, are arguing with things I didn't say and positions I don't hold. I do have to admit, though, that Matt, the factory worker, seems to be a lot more willing to accept being mistaken and to admit his assumptions than does Michael, the former criminal defense attorney. And that is ironic.

"Just say no" to drug testing.

From TalkLeft: Drug Testing Fails to Deter Drug Use. Although in the 1980's it was considered the deterrent of choice, it turns out that piss-testing has essentially no effect at all on whether students use drugs. Ironic, eh? I wonder what effect it has on workplace drug use? Little, if any, I suspect.

The freedom to assent.

Brooke at the bitter shack of resentment points out this press release from the ACLU about their report "Freedom Under Fire: Dissent in Post-9/11 America." (The report is a PDF file; you need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it.) This report details the suppression of dissent in the United States since September 11, 2001. It is pretty chilling.

The report talks about the February, 2003, antiwar protest in which hundreds were arrested and interrogatedwithout counsel present "about their political affiliations and prior activities," which information was methodically entered into a database. When embarrassed by NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman, the NYPD halted the program abruptly.

In another case, the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against the police of Washington, D.C. "with deliberately violating the constitutional rights of more than 400 peaceful anti-war demonstrators and bystanders by directed them into a police trap and them arresting them — though they had not violated any law." The arrestees "were charged with failing to obey a police order — though no order to disperse was ever given." The ACLU contends that people who tried to leave were in fact physically prevented from doing so. There are also allegations of police misconduct in this affair.

There have also been FBI agents on college campuses; agents questioned a faculty member and a campus organizer at the University of Massachusetts in December, 2002. Protesting students at Grinnell College were threatened with arrest for hanging a flag upside-down. A freshman at Durham Technical College in North Carolina was questioned by the Secret Service after an anonymous report of her so-called "anti-American" wall poster opposing the death penalty.

Of course they mention the debacle in Oakland, CA, in which police used rubber bullets, wooden pellets and tear gas to break up an anti-war protest.

The report also gives attention to the nasty habit of the Bush administration to move dissenting protesters well away from sight and sound of President Bush's appearances and speeches. People who refuse to move are arrested. However, people with views that support the Administration are allowed to remain. One of the best is this story:

The report mentions suppression of dissent on military bases, in schools, in places of business, pretty much everywhere Americans can gather. The report concludes:

And you thought we lived in a free country. I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU for just this reason. Are you?

An opiate of the masses.

Steve Gilliard at the Daily Kos gives us "War is a force that gives us meaning." He refers to Chris Hedges' new book of the same name but then leaves it behind to talk about the "myths of heroic violence" behind war. In the most moving part of Steve's piece, he portrays Bin Laden and now Saddam Hussein as laughing at Bush's threats of "hunting them down" or bringing them to "American justice." Steve then says,

I have said before that fear is our only true enemy. The entire idea behind the concept of "terrorism" is to induce terror. If we become terrified, terrorists have achieved their goal. If we instead put aside our fear and begin to behave rationally, using our best expertise and knowledge to treat the causes of terror rather than attacking symbolic scapegoats such as Iraq (which had nothing to do with 9/11, no matter how many times people might assert that it did), we defeat the basis of terrorism. By inflicting terror on the people of the Middle East, we guarantee the propagation of terror. Only by eschewing violence except where absolutely unavoidable, and then using it only in concert with the rest of the world, can we possibly defeat Bin Laden and prevent the rise of others of his ilk.

It seems desperately ironic that while we of course have won the war in Iraq, we are bound to lose the peace unless we change our strategy utterly. Our "leaders" are failing us; they invaded Iraq on a false pretext while they have ignored the previous subject of their attentions, Afghanistan, where the Taliban is growing stronger and our puppet government can't even control the whole of the capital city. Meanwhile we lose our own civil rights bit by bit, and for what? Safety? We are no more or less safe now than we were before 9/11/2001. Even though we have "protective" (and intrusive and rights-violating) measures in place, we are being governed by fools who prefer their own fantasies to the realities that the military and intelligence agencies offer them.

The best way and in truth the only way to defeat tyranny, including the kind of tyranny that Bin Laden would impose, is to do as Steve suggests. Close Guantanamo. Show ourselves to be the champion of human and civil rights that we have always claimed, falsely, to be. Once we do that, maybe we can begin to regain the trust of those whom our leaders have alienated and maybe we can begin to gain the trust of those who provide the basis for terrorism, people who most of all want to live their lives in peace but are reacting to impossible situations. Until then, they will turn to those who, like Bin Laden, they see as being their only hope for change.

A nasty little bigot.

J. at Silver Rights points out a story about a Seattle high school teacher who repeatedly called one of his students a "nigger." This was in response to that student referring to an assignment as "gay." Can you say "disproportionate response?" Even I, who am not around adolescents at all, know that a teenager calling something "gay" is hardly worth consideration, much less punishment. That this moron thought that using the offensive, racist term "nigger" was an appropriate response just proves beyond any possible doubt that he has no business in a classroom. Any classroom.

Unfortunately, the bigot is probably not going to be fired. It's his "first offense." Probably won't be his last, though. Were I a parent with a child in that school, the idiot would be fired or I would pull my kid from the school.

And the less said about the bloggers who have actually defended this bigot, the better.

Feh.

Update, May 23, 2003: See my entry for today for a correction.

Voting wrongs.

Welcome to the Old America. On Alternet: Jim Crow Revived in Cyberspace. This story refers to the removal in Florida of hundreds of black voters from the voter rolls before the 2000 election. These voters just happened to have names similar to the names of convicted felons somewhere in the United States. The one other commonality: They were all black.

Okay, so that was bad, but surely the problem has been fixed in the years since, right?

Um, no. Not only has the problem not been fixed, the mechanism used to conduct the purge, centralized, "computerized" voter files, is being required by every state, due to the so-called "Help America Vote" Act, passed by Congress last year. The Federal Election Commission has the details of the Act; you can find an analysis of the Act at the Public Citizen Congress Watch page and a letter from the ACLU to Congress decrying the Act on the ACLU website.

Among other things, this Act requires much tougher identification at polling places. From the ACLU letter:

Emphasis theirs. This requirement is fraught with problems, as the letter points out. It is unbelievably easy to have a false mismatch in the verification process, due to any number of factors.

Also, photographic identification is now required:

I might point out that the poor are not the only people who stand to be disenfranchised by this requirement. College students often may not have all of these forms of identification, or, even if they do, these new requirements may well be seen as onerous, discouraging them from exercising their right to vote. These requirements also make it perilously easy to falsely deny a persons right to vote at the polling place, as happens to college students (not to mention the poor and/or ethnic minorities) with frightening regularity. (My brother tells me a hair-raising story of his experience in College Station, Texas, when he was working on his doctorate. He tried to vote and was falsely denied. Knowing his rights, he went to the voting commission headquarters and forced them to allow him to vote, but most students simply became discouraged, or, worse, believed the liars at the polling place, and just didn't vote. This happens, believe it.)

As for the centralization of voter files, as a software engineer I know just how easily such centralization can fail, either through abuse or through failures of the design or implementation of the system. All computer systems have bugs and even when there are no partisan bureaucrats trying to manipulate the system, people will be dropped from the rolls accidentally. The chances of this happening are one hundred percent. Adding people in whose interest it is to see that certain classes of people (students, minorities, software engineers, "troublemakers") are dropped and the potential for abuse becomes unmeasurably high.

Go read the analyses. Read the stories. Then tell your Representatives and your Senators that you will no longer stand idly by while they trade your rights away!

I like where I live.

Eric at IsThatLegal? points us at this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The California Assembly voted unanimously to call for the resignation of Representative Howard Coble as chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism due to his comments in February about the Japanese internment during World War II. This vote didn't go along party lines, the 32 Republicans voted for Coble's resignation as well.

I particularly like what Assemblymen George Nakano and Alan Nakanishi, who were both interned as children, had to say:

The right man for the job.

Billmon has the scoop on Ari's potential replacement: Whiskey Bar: A Very Strong Candidate.

The man is certainly very well-qualified.

Heh.

Have a shot on me.

Hop over to the Whiskey Bar and read about the latest dirty commies ferretted out by perhaps the best blogger out there, Billmon himself. If you haven't read him yet, you have a treat in store. If you have, why are you still reading this?

Welcome to the USA ... but not if you're a journalist.

Matt Welch has an article up at Reason, Keeping Journalists Out, about the barring and forcible repatriation of six French journalists who wanted to cover the E3 conference here in Los Angeles. They were entering the United States under the Visa Waiver Program, under which they are not supposed to need a special business or journalist visa. The very fact that they tried to enter under this program means that they can't appeal the decision to deport them but an appeal wouldn't succeed anyway, since journalists don't qualify for the VWP. Journalists apparently need

It looks to me like this is a way to keep "undesirable" journalists out of the United States. Matt notes that this visa has been required for some time, but while previously a violation was just a minor infraction, now it is being strongly (and heavy-handedly) enforced, using, as one might expect, a new "comprehensive immigration database," the so-called "Consular Lookout and Support System. As I've mentioned before, the potential for problems with such a database is great. False positives and negatives are virtually guaranteed and the potential for abuse of the system is essentially unmeasurable, particularly when one considers that the "Department of Homeland Security" (a name I loathe) has very little, if any, oversight. Why do I feel very, very nervous about this new development? Why would the United States possibly want to exclude foreign journalists? All the possible answers I can come up with chill me to the bone. As Matt concluded,

Finding a job.

As I've mentioned before in passing, I'm currently out of work, having been laid off back in January by Wind River Systems. The layoff was big enough that a California law kicked in requiring the company to give everyone two months notice, making my last day of full pay March 26. This helped, the reasonably generous severance helped a little more, and a pretty decent tax refund helped even more. Today is May 22 and I'm still out of work, with nothing solid on the horizon.

I am a software engineer. I do Unix kernel work, which is pretty specialized and not all that common; in particular I have experience with "high availability," "software fault tolerance" and "clustering" work, among other things, making my skill set even more distinguishable from your average kernel hacker. I also have some 17 years of experience, all of it in operating systems work and the last ten in Unix kernel work. My credentials are impeccable and I've been told many times that my resume is one of the best they've ever seen.

So why haven't I found a job?

In a nutshell, it's the economy. The high-tech industry in California is in terrible shape. Companies are still laying off; Slashdot has a story this evening that SGI is laying off another 400 employees, ten percent of its workforce. I have heard that the typical advertised opening generates some 3,000 responses. It's tough to stand out in a pile of resumes 3,000 deep, even if I happen to be the best-qualified for the job. Since January, I have had fewer than ten telephone interviews and only one in-person interview. Still, though, with my qualifications I should be able to find something.

Today I heard from the company with whom I interviewed in person, almost a month ago. I had expected an offer from them, honestly, and was surprised that it was taking so long. Well, the reason it took so long was that they had been working on their budget for their new fiscal year. Today I heard that, apparently based on the performance of the last quarter, the leadership of the company decided to freeze hiring as a way to save money. The manager with whom I had interviewed had two open positions, as two of his employees had departed. Those positions will not be filled. And I won't be getting an offer from the manager, since he is not allowed to hire anyone. Despite my qualifications and the manager's need, I won't get this job.

This is actually the second time this has happened; the first time was with a company in Santa Barbara with which I had worked as part of my job at Wind River. The manager there knew my qualifications even before I sent him a resume and really wanted to bring me in, but he ended up being unable to fill the position. The company wasn't doing well, various decisions were made, directions changed and he ended up hiring no one.

In other situations, companies with which I have spoken have hired people who were more local or who had less experience (making them cheaper to hire) or who simply had the exact experience for which they were looking. In the current job market, a company can fill a position precisely, almost no matter how tight the requirements. There are a lot of people looking for work. If a candidate with the precise set of skills doesn't come along today, he or she will come along tomorrow. This is called a "buyer's market."

Bush claims that his "stimulus package" will add tens of thousands of jobs every month for the next two years. Well, he passed a "stimulus package" two years ago, a pretty large tax cut package. I got $300 then, but today I'm out of a job. So are a hell of a lot of other people. Another 448,000, according to today's new statistics. At this rate, we'll all be "stimulated" into poverty. Well, except for Bush and his wealthy cronies, who will vote themselves another tax-free dividend to stick in the bank.

I'm still working on finding a job. In the meantime, both the state and federal governments have lost any tax I might have paid and the state is further burdened by the pittance of unemployment compensation they send me. And Bush is getting another tax cut which will do nothing but add a little more energy to the downward economic spiral. A tax cut which he claims will "add jobs" and "stimulate the economy." Just like the last tax cut.

Bush is either a fool or a lying bastard (or both). Either way, he is one of the two or three worst Presidents this country has ever had, an assessment with which I suspect history will, in time, agree.

Racist teacher reprimanded, resigns.

The racist teacher in Seattle of whom I wrote a few days ago has resigned, according to J. at Silver Rights, after receiving a written reprimand from the school district. Of course, in his letter of resignation, he claimed that others misinterpreted his actions. 'Tain't so, though; when a white person uses the word "nigger" in reference to a person with dark skin, it's never anything other than racist. I certainly agree with J. that it's good that he was reprimanded and resigned, though. As I said before, he has no business whatsoever teaching children.