Source: rall.com

Newsblast!
This advertisment is simply too much for New Zealanders to handle, their health ministry has decided. The poster, a promotion for World Breastfeeding Week, asks the viewer to consider if breastfeding at work would be easier if a man had to do it, since returning to work is cited as a reason for why mothers stop breast feeding. As anyone with my mindset would guess, of course it would be easier. If men could lactate, it would cause chaos at work, home, and the sports pub when they would try to shoot each other with milk or try to suck their own nipples. Natures knows that men are not mature enough to handle milk. :) And just think of the world we would live in if men could give birth.. The legality of abortion wouldn't even be a question, it would be a drive-thru franchise.

A Bush flunkie, excuse me, weapons expert, tells a (I beleve Congressional) inquiry to be patient while the Buh administration is searching for proof that Iraq had a weapons program. What's this "program" bullshit? First we were told that Saddam has weapons and he posed a danger to not only has neighbors, but to Europe and North America. While Bush showed his impatience at UN weapons inspectors could couldn't find squat, people like Donnie Rumsfeld told us that he knew exactly where the weapons were. Now that we went to war with Iraq, suddenly we can't find these weapons, so now all were searching for is a weapons "program"? Well, duh, of course Saddam had some type of program, he needed one to receive all the chemical weapons we gave him in the 80's. Give us the weapons, Bush, not evidence of a fucking weapons program. This is such bullshit.. Will anybody hold this man's feet to the fire?

From the "I'll mention here even though everyone else reported it 12 hours ago" department, John Poindexter has resigned because of the terrorism futures market fiasco. The blogsphere had this as one of their top stories last night, which is why I was surprised to find this story buried on the next to last page in the A section of today's paper. The story mentioned that POindexter was a retired admiral, but nothing about TIA or the fact that he helped sell weapons to Iran during the Reagan administration. Gotta love that mainstream media for making sure the public knows the facts.

It's almost impossible to not mention Poindexter and freedom in the same breath. A new study shows that Americans fundamental freedoms restored to pre-9/11 levels. There are a number of interesting tidbits from this study, done by a first amendment advocacy organization: "52 percent said media ownership by fewer corporations has meant a decreased number of viewpoints available to the public; 53 percent said the quality of information also has suffered," and, "Almost eight in 10 respondents said owners exert substantial influence over news organizations' newsgathering and reporting decisions. Only 4 percent said they believed there is no tampering with story selection or play." Maybe there is hope for America.

Unemployment has dipped from 6.4% to 6.2%, even though 44,000 jobs were lost last month. The reason for the dip? People have simply stopped looking for work. On this topic, I finally have a job. But living out on the East Coast near a couple of large cities means that I should be employed, and I'm not exactly making the big bucks. My new pay rate has slipped 5 or 6 years backwards in time, so I feel like a kid again for all the wrong reasons.

North Korea wants six-way talks about the nuclear crisis. Instead of demanding to speak with the US alone, NK has now invited South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia to the table.

Israel has passed a law that will not allow Palestinians into Israel even if they are married to an Israeli citizen.

A French judge has released activist Jose Bove from prison early.

In Britain, some members of the government feel that the Iraqi conflict may have driven more muslims into al-Qa'ida. They also do not see any less of a threat from international terrorism.

Newsblast!
Bush nominates a tax court judge who cheated on his taxes. Just to show you how out of touch the right is from reality, Republican Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley doesn't see a problem with the Bush nomination, since the man has so much other experience in the field of tax law, and that we should be lucky to have his services. Somebody send this man a clue, quick.

Pac Bell Internet Services is fighting for file sharers by suing the RIAA, questioning the constitutionality of their efforts to indentify file sharers.

Two MIT grad students contend that random searches at airports will work better than profiling to find terrorists, thus protecting us. This, of course, is only their opinion, but their reasoning is sound, and I suggest reading the article.

Here are the world's worst beers. Surprisingly, Natty Light only clocks in at number 8.

The government actually does something cool today, naming Memphis' Sun Studios, the birthplace of rock n' roll, a national historic landmark. This happened after Sun Records founder Sam Phillips passed away yesterday. This article also lists 17 other new historcial sites.

Message from the Far East
Matt called me yesterday afternoon. He's was in Hong Kong for the past 4 days, so if any of you have missed his posts, that's why there haven't been any. He told me that he has been watching excessie amounts of BBC Newsnight and they have had some interesting stories. One was about the security fae that Israel is building around Palestinian land, and how this fence is seeping deep into Palestinian territory, thus taking away more of their land. Also reported was Israeli settlements into Palestinian territory building their own security fences around themselves and refusing to leave. Man, that's just peachy. I'm predicting that this conflict will still be around long after I have passed away, and I'm only 25.

Anyways, speaking of travel, I will be heading to New Hampshire tonight, not to return until tomorrow. So the blog will be kind of dead until thursday.

More super ideas from your government
The Pentagon wanted to start a terrorism "futures" market, wherein investors could bet anonymously on things like if and when Yasser Arafat will be assassinated or if Israel will be attacked with biochemical weapons. Talk about macabre. This idea was hatched by John Poindexter at DARPA, his crimes and other recent ideas should ring a bell.

Luckily, after pressure from Democrati senators, this program was canceled before it could begin taking registrations on Friday.

Keep in mind that the traders on this market would have been anonymous. So, somebody could put a load of money down on an event to happen, then this anonyous somebody could cause such an event to happen, then profit from it. If betting on death and destruction isn't disturbing enough to make you think, I hope that will.

Sen. Bryon Dorgan bought up another great point, and you have to wonder what the response fromt he Bush administration would be if what he says actually happened: "Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in and bet on the assassination of an American political figure or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?"

Carcieri's bumbling balancing act
Those of us chowdaheads living in Rhode Island should be interested in the article on the fronpage of today's Providence Journal: "Carcieri gives unions choice of cuts in pay or benefits". Our governor still persists in trying to balance the state budget on the backs of state workers who have done nothing wrong. He is suggesting either a 5% pay cut or the workers chip in more money for health benefits and have their copays increased.

Some of these workers pull in only $30,000, so they risk taking a $1500 pay cut just because they are state workers. That's the monthly rent for some apartments on Providence's East Side. All of this coming from the Ocean State which doesn't charge a sales or use tax on boats built or bought in our state (click here if you don't believe me). How many state workers bringing home $30,000 a year do you think own boats?

Meanwhile, on page A9 is a very interesting story from the AP wires: "Mass. city buying its medicines in Canada". (I've linked the story from a different source; same story, no subscription links to go through.) This story discusses how Springfield, MA, is providing a program for city workers to provide them with prescription drugs, same ones you can get here in the US, from Canada, purchased at rock bottom prices. They city, providing this program to its 9000 workers, could save $4 million.

Anybody see where I'm going with this? Our state employs more than 9000 workers. While $4 million isn't our par with the $42.5 million that governor Carcieri seeks to save by bilking state employees, he can save some money, save some benefits, and go after taxes which deserve to be paid, like the boat tax. Or if he still fels like picking on state workers, he could offer this program in return for a 2.5% pay cut, which would save the state a bundle of money and state workers would be keepingmore money in their wallets.

Carcieri is a man who came into office saying that he would administrate the state budget like he would the budget from the multi-billion corporation he used to be a CEO of: look at the budget line by line and cut expenses (read: state spending). He talked about getting rid of state cell phones and credit cards given to state employees, and go after small things like that. Decrease state spending by weeding out frivolous expenses. That's a platform that anybody can reasonably support, but it does not look like Carcieri is adhering to it. If he keeps trying to balance the state budget on the backs unionized state workers, this heavily Democratic state will finally elect a Democrat governor in 2006.

Holy Fuck!
This fucker is absofuckinglutely the best fucking legal defense of the best fucking word in the fucking world.

Fucking satire aside.. The link goes to a legal brief filed by a public defender for a student who used the F-word when his high school vice principle caught him smoking in the bathroom. So what does his vice principle do? He gets charges filed against the kid, getting him tried for a misdemeanor. Honest to fucking god, what happened to keeping punishment for troublesome kids within the school system? This kid smoked in the bathroom and swore at his vice principle, does he really need charges filed against him that will just clog up the legal system?

Anyways, this legal brief is hilarious. It goes into a history of the F-word, proving how popular it is and how it's been accepted into the English language with open arms. He does a chart of Google hits, showing that the F-word gets more hits then "baseball", "hot dogs", "apple pie", "mom", and "chevrolet". Unfortunately, because of a pleas bargain, this will never be used in court. But it's still great for a fucking laugh.

Michael Savage could be California's next Governor
[Update: There's been a few twists to this story that make some of my information blogged earlier today incorrect. Not only are some Democrats thinking about running, but the field of potential candidates is becoming ridiculous. The SF Chronicle reports that Arianna Huffington and Gary Condit are thinking about running, along with a couple of Greens. Uggabugga has some satire on the potential ballot.]

The talk show host who thinks that sodomites should "get AIDS and die" is pondering whether he should place himself on the recall ballot in California if their governor, Gray Davis, is recalled.

For those not familiar with the unique situation taking place in California, state Republicans have gathered up enough signatures to force a vote on whether or not to recall governor Gray Davis, a Democrat. Davis was reelected last year, despite opinion polls showing that most state residents aren't too fond of the man. But, as the nation (should have) learned with the Florida fiasco of 2000, Republicans don't believe that free, fair, and democratic elections are what we should use to choose public office holders, especially if they lose at the polls. Such is the case in California, where despite voters supporting Davis and electing him back into office, that's just not good enough for the Republicans. They want a do over.

Speaking strictly in terms of how the government of a republic should work, recall votes should be allowed, even if the other side is a bunch of whining crybabies. But in California, their recall elections have a horrible, undemocratic byproduct: the ballot has a list of candidates you can choose from to be the next governor. The Republicans, of course, will be throwing their names onto the ballot, but since the Democrats have closed rank around their governor, they will not run a candidate. This means that a far right-wing Republican candidate who, in a general election, wouldn't have a shot in hell at becoming governor, that kind of candidate could finish Davis' term if he is recalled.

That far-right candidate could be Michael Savage, who is putting together at platform and askig his listeners whether or not he should run. Or it could be Rep. Darrell Issa, whose millions have funded the recall drive, and he is the only candidate currently registereed to be on the recall ballot. Mr. Issa's views also lean very heavily to the right, so much so that he wouldn't stand a chance in a general election.

What the Republicans in California are attempting to do is nothing short of a coup. You want to launch an effort to recall the governor? Fine, you are allowed to do so, but attempting to place a candidate in office that the population of California would not have elected through a general election is undemocratic. The Republicans had their chance last year to get their candidate elected, and he lost the election.

California Republicans might claim that Davis won the election because he lied about the states budget problems and use that as a reason to recall him. Fine, if Davis has lied to the public then he should be subject to a recall vote. But if he is recalled, then his Lieutenant Governor should be in charge of the state until there is another general election.

The Republicans don't want this, though. They don't want to use this recall for democratic purposes that would be in the interests of California citizens, they want to use this recall election to place a far-right candidate in Sacramento. Is there really any question that the Republicans do not believe in a fair fight, and they will do anything, legal or otherwise, to gain power, even if it goes against the will of the majority?

The reason not to use Computerized Voting
This is old news, but in case you missed it, huge security flaws have been found in the new computerized voting systems.

In my humble opinion, which I will subject you to because you are reading my site, computerized methods of voting isn't an option that's too dangerous to warrant exploring, nor do we need any computerized method of voting in the first place. Here in Rhode Island, we have the best method of voting I have even seen: we're given a paper ballot and a marker, and we connect the arrows next to the candidate we want to vote for. After we're done voting, we put the ballot into a machine. If we have filled out our ballot incorrectly, we know immediately, that ballot is destroyed, we get a lesson on how to vote properly and turn in the proper ballot to be counted.

Having a paper ballot is important because they can be subjected to a recount. They are tangible, you can hold them an store them and recount them as many times as you want.

With computerized voting, none of those things are possible, and that's dangerous to democracy. If we cannot have votes in contested elections recounted by different, independent parties, then how can we truly say that we have a democracy? This is especially important since Diebold, the company contracted to make the new computerized voting machines, refuses to make the source code open to the public so that anyone (who is programming savvy) can check it. This action is wholly undemocratic: we, the people who elect our own government, should have full access to the code that runs computerized voting machines to make sure that there are no backdoors, secuirty risks, or any votes already tallied in the system.

Unfortunately, this is the government's appalling answer to the Florida fiasco. Our undemocratically selected president wants to usher in a new, undemocratic system of voting. Just business as usual for the old boys network.

From the "WTF?" department
While many priests who raped children still roam free to preach, two nuns were sentenced to at least 2 1/2 years in prison for the high crime of vandalizing a nuclear missile silo at an antiwar protest. The asshole -- excuse me, judge, who is doing his part to protect the citzens of this nation against harmless, old nuns said they are, "dangerously irresponsible."

What's the next agenda for the Bush administration, digging up Mother Teresa to make sure she gets a salad tossing? It's great to know that our tax dollars are being used to lock up nuns who protest against the government. This sure makes me sleep better at night. We don't have a nationalized health care system and our schools are falling apart, yet we're wasting our resources to put NUNS on trial. I hope that all parties involved know that they are going to the hell they supposedly believe in for this.

Greg Palast on Liberia
I have avoided mentioning Liberia until now because I don't really know what to say. Seeing how the Bush administration has used our troops, I feel apprehensive about Bush sending our troops anywhere. The mainstream media has articles saying that Liberian citizens want American soldiers to come to help end the civil war that the country is in, and they have gone as far as to drag dead bodies, fresh casualities from the war, to the US embassy in an effort to get our military on their soil. Given how much trust I have in the mainstream media, I wondered if there was another side off the story that they weren't telling.

In this case, there probably isn't. Greg Palast supports sending troops to Liberia, and he recently wrote a column that discusses Liberian history and how the US played a role in making Liberia what it is today, people are suffering, and that do only can we put it to a stop to their civil war but we have an obligation to. This is a must-read column.