2007 archive

I was cruising around the blogosphere earlier tonight, too tired to do anything creative, until someone re-energized me.

There were many good posts that I did not have the energy to blog about.

So I will take the coward’s way out and just link:

Dick Polman compiling the evidence (that’s evidence, not opinion) on Bush’s lies leading us into a phony war.

Duncan on NeoCons (that does mean convicts who have just escaped, does it not?)

Dan Froomkin on Bush’s Torquemadas.

Tbogg on sociopathy.

An email to Andrew Sullivan on the in(s)anity of William Kristol. (Aside: Given the Mr. Kristol’s batting average of .000 of predicting the future, why the hell does anyone listen to him any more?)

Digby on human nature, brutality, and the Current Federal Administrator.

Phil Hoskins on Family Values.

Upyernoz on the Fighting 101st.

Susie on Republican panty sniffers.

Jason on the Hand of God.

Jon Swift (by heavens, he’s one of the best writers on the innertubes!) on the inimical influence of the Harry Potter stories.

Brendan on impeachment.

Phillybits on Phillybusters.

I know.

The updates have become infrequent.

That is because Waste of Newsprint is running true to “conservative” (I put the work in quotation marks to differentiate between conservatives and those who call themselves conservative, but are actually radicals in sheep’s clothing) form, applying one standard to Republicans and a different one to Democrats.

Ho-Hum.

One of my neighbors used to have a second job at the local outlet of a major national retailer. I won’t mention who it was, but, when I was growing up on Pine View Farm, the arrival of its catalog, twice a year for the big catalog and then in the fall for the Christmas catalog, were Big Events.

She was required either to carry no purse of to carry a see-through purse. She had this little clear plastic purse she used only when she was going to her second job.

The school systems are taking the cue.

(Aside: When I was in school, we had book bags. Later on, when attache cases became fashionable, we had attache cases. Same difference. And none of us, not even the baddest kids–and we had some pretty bad kids–would have thought of bringing a firearm to school. Fists were enough.)

It has come to this in the quest for safe schools: Cloth backpacks, for decades a fixture in the lives of most high school students, will be banned from the hallways of Montgomery County’s Wissahickon High School starting this fall.

If students walking between classes want to use a backpack, it must be made of clear plastic or mesh so its contents can be seen at a glance. Cloth backpacks can be carried into the school in the morning but must be stored in lockers.

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Center City Philadelphia.

We’re going to try to be there.

No guarantees, of course.

There never are.

Speaking of lies, the courts seems to have had enough. It’s slapdown everytime the Current Federal Administration tries to justify its concentration camps.

A federal appeals court ordered the government yesterday to turn over virtually all its information on Guantánamo detainees who are challenging their detention, rejecting an effort by the Justice Department to limit disclosures and setting the stage for new legal battles over the government’s reasons for holding the men indefinitely.

(snip)

A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously rejected a government effort to limit the information it must turn over to the court and lawyers for the detainees.

The court said meaningful review of the military tribunals would not be possible “without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than half by looking only at the numerator and not the denominator.”

Advocates for detainees have criticized the tribunals since they were instituted in 2004 because the terror suspects held at Guantánamo have not been permitted lawyers during the proceedings and have not been allowed to see much of the evidence against them.

P. Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer who argued the case for detainees, called the ruling “a resounding rejection of the government’s effort to hide the truth.”

Via Huffington Post.

With apologies to Kommandant Klink

Ever heard life insurance defined:

The life insurance company is betting that you won’t die. You are betting that you will die. And you hope the life insurance company wins the bet.

Since I entered the world of 1099s, I have been shopping for health insurance.

I do have excellent secondary coverage, but I want primary coverage so I can cover my younger son.

The policy I finally settled on (have you ever shopped for medical insurance?) through my professional society involved a $10,000 deductible and a monthly premium of almost $600.00, but it did include good emergency room coverage.

And, bluntly, what type of coverage is a young person most likely to require?

Yesterday, I got word that the application was denied.

For both of us.

For me, because I am Old.

I’m not in bad health, but I do have That Bad Smoking Habit, high blood pressure (well under control), and very mild sleep apnea. In other words, I’m not atypical for someone who’s lived almost six decades.

My son got denied because he had kidney surgery several years ago to correct what the doctor (an internationally renowned pediatric kidney surgeon, though we did not find that out until later) was pretty sure was a congental problem that, today, would have been detected early, but, when he was born, probably would not have been.

As I said, I have excellent coverage.

But what about my son?

This health care system that is designed to benefit the insurance companies and, frankly, no one else, has got to go.

Upyernoz has a related tale.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Bushisms: Iraq lies, aggregated. It’s a pretty appalling collection.

Via Phillybits.

They’re ready. They have demonstrated adequate incompetence.

A trash fire started by township supervisors burned down their municipal building, authorities said.

(snip)

A new township pickup truck with just 100 miles on its odometer was also destroyed, supervisor Galen Beachy said. Luckily, most of the township’s plowing equipment and the records were stored elsewhere, he said.

I cannot improve on its eloquence.

This has been my first edition of What Atrios Said.

ASZ has the goods on another person who arrogates to himself the privilege of telling us how to conduct ourselves.

I have no problem with persons who let their faith guide their votes. That is their right.

Frankly, I have no problems with someone who wishes to discuss his or her faith as it relates to his or her political beliefs.

I do sort of draw a line when someone wants to tell me that “God wants you to vote for X.” God talked directly with Moses and Elijah. I do not think he talked directly to Pat Robertson, despite Mr. Robertson’s claims to the contrary.

And I have a lot of problems with hypocrites. But, then, my two or three regular readers know that.

Mr. Coy C. Privette . . . was arrested for aiding and abetting prostitution, while Tiffany here was arrested for six counts of prostitution. (SIX COUNTS! The guy’s 74 years old! What kind of drugs is he on, and why didn’t they do a toxicology test or something! SIX COUNTS!) I suppose this is a big story in Kannapolis, NC. Since Mr. Privette tries to influence politics in this country as a leader of a conservative Christian group that supports Republican causes, it should be a big story everywhere.

Well, it’s happened.

The Current Federal Administrator has officially exempted himself and his hirelings from the Rule of Law:

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

Has the Current Federal Administration no shame?

I am beyond the point of believing that there is any limit to the venality of the Current Federal Administration (emphasis added). They purposefully let Americans die rather than fix a problem:

Pressed by an angry House committee, FEMA Administrator David Paulison promised yesterday to warn tens of thousands of displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina that they are living in agency trailers that may be contaminated with dangerously high levels of formaldehyde gas.

The noxious chemical has been linked to at least two deaths of FEMA trailer residents at a time when the agency ignored danger warnings from its own fieldworkers and instead delayed testing to avoid exposure to lawsuits, said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

(snip)

“Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK,” an agency attorney replied in an e-mail dated June 15, 2006. “Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.”

An agency memo dated the following day said the office of general counsel “has advised that we do not do testing, which would imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue.”

But they don’t use chains anymore–just a couple of guards with handguns, one of whom doubles as the van driver.

Two men working on a road crew near Selbyville escaped into Maryland but were captured near an elementary school this afternoon, the Delaware Department of Corrections said.

I remember seeing chain gangs when I was growing up. Sometimes, on the drive to visit my grandmother in northwest South Carolina, we would see them in North Carolina. (I’m not picking on North Carolina–it just happened to be the state we drove across.)

Yes, they were chained together. Yes, the guards carried shotguns. Yes, I remember seeing balls and chains.

There are plenty of reasons to wish Rudolph Guiliani a happy retirement.

So many that it’s not necessary to make stuff up. From Factcheck dot org:

The union representing New York City firefighters is running a misleading video blaming former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the deaths of more than 100 firefighters at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

We agree that Giuliani bears some responsibility for the widely documented failings of the fire department’s radio communications on 9/11. It is true that the effective functioning of the fire department is a major responsibility of any mayor, and Giuliani had been in office since 1994. However, the video goes too far when it implies that bad radio communication was the only reason that 121 firefighters failed to clear the North Tower of the Trade Center after the first tower collapsed. To the contrary, the 9/11 Commission stated in its final report that the technical failure of fire department radios “was not the primary cause of the many firefighter fatalities in the North Tower.”

. . . as every younger generation, is going to hell.

Max Blumenthal has the evidence.

Curses! Foiled Again!

I was going to blog about this, but Steve beat me to it.

I commend the post to your attention, not only for the post, but also for the back story.

It’s late.

I’m tired.

Second Son just called. He’s in British Columbia, Canada. (Yeah, it’s the only British Columbia I know, but I figured I should be specific.)

And Tim F. dissects the nutcases.