Abu Zarqawi will be caught alive. But he will hang himself in his cell when Reuters reports that Iraqi authorities found the director's cut of Brokeback Mountain in his portable DVD player.And The Anchoress has predictions, too. My fave:
Maureen Dowd becomes an eharmony.com success-story commercial.
Air America will finally go under, ironically undermined by "competition" from the taxpayer-supported NPR that they vigorously support. Distraught listeners in search of liberal viewpoints will be forced to turn to CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, etc...
The California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union makes a shocking discovery: Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco have Spanish names meaning "The Angels," "Holy Cross," and "St. Francis." It sues to rename them "The Angles," "Cruising," and "Frank."
5) Some people will look at New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia and other cities wherein liberalism has become entrenched, and they will discover that the Great Society has done little good for poor urban communities, in all these decades. They will begin to suggest that the Democrat party has for too long held too much power within those communities while giving them nothing but lip service and paranoid suggestions. As some black Democrats become Republicans, Wolf Blitzer will wonder how they can leave the party in good conscience, when they are “so poor and so black.” Morgan Freeman, having finally had enough, will smack him silly.I definitely wanna see it when Blitzer gets bitch-slapped. My favorite Blitzer moment of all-time was during the 2004 election eve coverage when CNN initially predicted Florida would go for Bush. I swear to Gaia I thought Blitzer was going to burst into tears. The man was distraught!
GOOD news in time for Mozart’s 250th birthday next month: listening to his music, according to the latest research, boosts IQ, squeezes more milk out of cows and makes rats more loveable.At the risk of identifying myself as a classical music tyro, Mozart is my favorite classical composer. Although I don't think his music has made me any smarter, it certainly has given me hours of enjoyment. Austria's Mozart Year will feature a tremendous amount of his music:
Judging by the frenzied commerce in the narrow streets of his birthplace, Salzburg, it also makes the cash tills ring.
Austria is gearing up for a year-long celebration of its best-known composer. With 500 events planned for 2006, it hopes to use Mozart to rebrand itself as a serious European player, the place where the big issues of European identity can be hammered out.
“It will be an artistic feast,” says Inge Brodil, a former set designer who is helping to co-ordinate the programme for the Mozart Year. Salzburg alone will host 260 concerts and 55 masses. “For the first time, all 22 of Mozart’s operas will be staged,” Frau Brodil says.Some quick Wolfie facts:
Born in Salzburg on January 27, 1756An amazing man with an amazing body of work for someone who died just before his 36th birthday.
Educated by Leopold, his father, a professional musician
First musical piece written aged 5; first stage work aged 11
Mozart spent a third of his life on tour
He is said to have suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, a disorder compelling him to repeat obscene words
The Abduction from the Seraglio, written when he was 26, was Mozart’s most successful musical work during his lifetime
He died on December 5, 1791, from a fever
... the president ought to open his State of the Union Address by asking Congress to give him official authority to approve warrantless searches of known and identified terrorists, or of people in regular contact with those terrorists whom authorities reasonably suspect of plotting to commit acts of murder, terror or sabotage. These activities ought to be subject to monthly review by the attorney general. The administration also ought to be required each month to brief the top four congressional leaders, both intelligence committees and the head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.Ooh, it's good.
...
Note who has not spoken against the NSA program since the Times story broke. The list includes Harry Reid and Dick Durbin in the Senate; Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer in the House; and members of both intelligence committees. In other words, Democrats in the know either have supported the surveillance program or just kept their mouths shut.
Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. "It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism."All too true. I'm old enough to remember the dark days of the late 70s and early 80s when the CIA was essentially gutted. We're paying the price today for that over-reaction. Let's hope the Left's current faux outrage over "spy scandals" doesn't result in similar counter-productive investigations, legislation, and the resulting exodus of intelligence professionals from the CIA and like organizations.
Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge, who directed the CIA's covert efforts to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseas is, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. "You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don't want it to do those dastardly things, don't have it. You can have the State Department."
Ah, yes, the president and his people have a lot of enemies out there, but his friends are just as exercised. A reader from San Diego offered a view that was repeated in many forms: "Most liberals and some Democrats hate this president and will do anything to bring him down, including siding with terrorists against the president."On the whole, not a bad column. I would suggest to Mr. Dionne if he has any influence at all in Washington, he direct the comments in his last two sentences towards people who make statements such as "the war is unwinnable" and "our troops are terrorizing Iraqi families" (both quotes paraphrased). Perhaps if the usual suspects toned down their rhetoric we on the right wouldn't "view (our) political adversaries as something close to traitors." Honest disagreement with, and debate on, policy issues are completely different than providing aid and comfort to the enemy, ya know. Just sayin'.
And here is where I start worrying about our national mood. I don't mind being assailed myself -- even by a theologically minded reader who called me a "badly catechized Catholic." (Blame me, not the nuns and priests who taught me!) But when big chunks of the country begin to view their political adversaries as something close to traitors, we have arrived at a very dangerous time. For this badly catechized Catholic, it's a reason to pray hard for something better next year.
Sociologists like to point out that the percentage of those describing themselves as "happy" or "very happy" has remained virtually unchanged in Europe and the United States since such surveys were first conducted in the 1950's. And yet, this January, like last year and next, the self-help industry will pour forth books promising to make us happier than we are today. The very demand for such books is a strong indication that they aren't working.I'd like to see a survey delineating "happiness" by political affiliation. I'd venture a guess that conservatives are a helluva lot happier than liberals. Not for nothing are entire liberal communities known as "The Perpetually Offended."
Should that be a cause for concern? Some critics say it is. For example, economists like Lord Richard Layard and Daniel Kahneman have argued that the apparent stagnancy of happiness in modern societies should prompt policymakers to shift their priorities from the creation of wealth to the creation of good feelings, from boosting gross national product to increasing gross national happiness.
But before we take such steps, we might do well to reflect on the darker side of holiday cheer: those mysterious blues that are apt to set in while the streamers stream and the corks pop; the little voice that even in the best of souls is sometimes moved to say, "Bah, humbug." As Carlyle put it, "The prophets preach to us, 'Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things.' " But as he well knew, the very commandment tended to undermine its fulfillment, even to make us sad.
How will the Democrats use the war issue?Let's hope the Dems take Kos' advice. Kos is also down on John McCain, calling him "the Republicans' Joe Lieberman." Damn, but I'm glad the Dems still don't get it. I believe a lot of independents and socially-liberal Republicans would vote for Lieberman in a heartbeat.
This is a little frustrating for me. Here’s a perfect opportunity for Democrats to have led on an issue, and they haven’t. The problem is that part of the Democratic caucus thinks it’s manly and tough to be for the war. They are afraid to basically state what the reality on the ground is.
Did Congressman John Murtha’s criticism of the war embolden the Dems?
The Democratic caucus should have rallied behind Murtha. That was all the cover they needed to come out on this issue. But they were sill weak. The reason I loved Paul Hackett in the Ohio (2005 House) race is because he didn’t equivocate about war. Hackett is an Iraq war veteran who ran as a Democrat in Ohio’s Second Congressional District outside Cincinnati—one of the most Republican districts in all of Ohio. He was viciously critical of George Bush and how he’s handled the war. Hackett lost, but only by 2 or 3 percent of the vote, which is an incredible margin in that district. [Hackett is now running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio.]
Life expectancy for a man has sunk to 58 years (72 for women), the lowest bar two of the 52 countries in the WHO European region.Those are apalling statistics for a nation that had aspirations of world domination only 20 short years ago. Poor health care, rampant alcoholism, AIDS, and low birth rates are cited as the primary causes. Most of which are symptoms of despair, in my eyes, although the Guardian doesn't come right out and say it.
Russia's population has plummeted by almost 7% to 143 million in the last 15 years, and is predicted to drop by another 20 million by 2025. And as Moscow gears up to take over the presidency of the G8 on January 1, the Kremlin is being urged to meet the crisis head on.
Let's now bring in two lawyers involved in potential cases. Edward Macmahon is lawyer for Ali Al-Timimi, a Muslim scholar who is serving a life sentence for inciting followers to wage war against the U.S. overseas.This is a classic example of why some enclaves in the Fourth Estate seems more like a Fifth Column. Read the whole thing.
And John Zwerling is representing Siefullah Chapman, a follower of Al-Timimi, currently serving a 65-year sentence in federal prison.
Let me ask each of you briefly, does this now mean—you guys are lawyers for these clients—that the president is going to be sued?
EDWARD MACMAHON, ATTORNEY FOR ALI AL-TIMIMI: Well, I can't say that Al-Timimi is going to file a lawsuit against anybody, but I'm sure that somebody that's the target of this warrantless surveillance will in fact sue the president. It's just a matter of time.
O'DONNELL: John, do you think the president will be sued?
JOHN ZWERLING, ATTORNEY FOR SEIFULLAH CHAPMAN: Well, not my client in the near future. He's more concerned with his liberty. He's more concerned with getting out of the trap than nibbling on the cheese.
O'DONNELL: But you have read this story now which is a huge story about what the NSA has been involved in. On what grounds now do you believe you have legal recourse for your clients who are currently serving jail time and have been convicted for terrorist ties?
MACMAHON: Well, I listened to Pete's intro. If the government has evidence in its possession that would help a defendant defeat charges—these guys essentially are serving life—the government doesn't have the right because of national security of any other reason just to sit on evidence that would help somebody in a criminal case.
O'DONNELL: Of course. But as Pete pointed out, you're never going to know because it's secret. That's the point of it, that they used this stuff. They didn't have to go through FISA in order to get this, so they may have obtained some information about your clients that you'll never know about it. What makes you think that you're ever going to find out about it?
...in the first survey that directly addresses the controversial program. The online Zogby Interactive poll, taken Dec. 20-21, found that nearly half of likely voters, 49 percent, say Bush has the constitutional powers to approve such a plan, while 45 percent say he does not.Or, the approximate split demonstrated in the 2004 election. If MSNBC and their fellow-travelers have their way, more Americans will be hostile to surveilling terrorists. I have faith in the public, however, to resist defeatists and Bush-haters.
About a decade ago, when he was vice president, Al Gore explained that our national motto, e pluribus unum, means "from one, many." This was a sad day for knowledge of Latin among our political elite—and after all those expensive private schools that Gore had been packed off to by his paterfamilias. It was the kind of flagrant mistranslation that, had it been committed by a Republican, say George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, would have been a gaffe heard round the world. But the media didn't play up the slip, perhaps because they had seen Gore's Harvard grades and figured he'd suffered enough, perhaps because they admired the remark's impudence. Though literally a mistake, politically the comment expressed and honored the multicultural imperative, then so prominent in the minds of American liberals: "from one," or to exaggerate slightly, "instead of one culture, many." As such it was a rather candid example of the literary method known as deconstruction: torture a text until it confesses the exact opposite of what it says in plain English or, in this case, Latin.and later:
After 9/11, we haven't heard much from multiculturalism. In wartime, politics tends to assert its sway over culture. In its most elementary sense, politics implies friends and enemies, us and them. The attackers on 9/11 were not interested in our internal diversity. They didn't murder the innocents in the Twin Towers or the Pentagon or on board the airplanes because they were black, white, Asian-American, or Mexican-American, but because they were American. (Although I bet that for every Jew they expected to kill, the terrorists felt an extra thrill of murderous anticipation.)
Multiculturalism likes to assert that all cultures are created equal, and that America and the West have sinned a great sin by establishing white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, heterosexual, patriarchal, capitalist—what's next, hurricane-summoning?—culture as predominant. The problem with this argument is that it is self-contradictory. For if all cultures are created equal, and if none is superior to any other, why not prefer one's own? Thus Huntington's preference for Anglo-Protestantism—he never establishes it as more than a patriot's preference, though as a scholar he tries to show what happens if we neglect it—is to that extent perfectly consistent with the claims of the multiculturalists, the only difference being that he likes the dominant culture, indeed, wants to strengthen it, and they don't.There's much more here than a critique of multiculturalism. Mr. Kesler discusses the interplay between culture and the concept of "creed," and the historical origins of these concepts as applied to America. You could look upon this essay as an intellectual explanation of the "Culture Wars." It gave me some insight as to how the political mind of the Left works.
Of course, despite their protestations, multiculturalists do not actually believe that all cultures are equally valid. With a clear conscience, they condemn and reject anti-multiculturalism, not to mention cultures that treat women, homosexuals, and the environment in ways that Western liberals cannot abide. Unless, perchance, such treatment is handed out by groups hostile to America; for Robert's Rules of Multicultural Order allow peremptory objections against, say, the Catholic Church, that are denied against such as the Taliban. Scratch a multiculturalist, then, and you find a liberal willing to condemn all the usual cultural suspects.
Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, the Canadian professors of philosophy who wrote Nation of Rebels, are men of the Left. "The reason we're leftists," Heath told the Nation of Rebels, "is that we actually share the core left-wing critique of capitalism…. [When] it comes to the environment, the stability of the banking system and the importance of macro-economic stabilization, labor-market policies, welfare, unemployment, health insurance—the Left has been absolutely right on every single issue."Voegeli closes with:
Their sensibilities, however, are conservative. Nation of Rebels can sound Burkean: "[The] only way we are able to go about our business in society is by trusting other people…. One way in which people establish the requisite trust is by demonstrating their willingness to play by the rules in small symbolic ways. This is the core function of courtesy and good manners." At one point Heath and Potter say to their allies on the Left, "[We] really need to stop worrying so much about fascism. What our society needs is more rules, not fewer." Elsewhere they contend that for adolescents the sexual revolution "was not liberation, it was hell. The absence of settled rules meant that no one knew what to expect from anyone else."
The 2004 election results triggered dismay and incredulity across the Left. Liberals have begun saying, "We've got to get serious." A 2004 article in the radical journal LiP, for instance, echoed the Nation of Rebels thesis: the Left has been undone by its own "activistism," an ideology combining "moral zeal" with "political illiteracy." The antiwar movement, for example, understands "success" to mean that "actions take place, conferences are planned, new people become activists," even though "it's no longer clear what war we're protesting." Details, details. "[It] turned out to be important to have something to say to skeptics who asked: 'What's your alternative?'"And there's lots of good stuff in between. All in the service of understanding, ya know.
Is an ameliorative Left possible? Heath and Potter are participants in an interesting experiment. If liberals' self-marginalizing narcissism is an accidental quality, one that can be cut away to leave behind a stronger determination to enact a better reform agenda, their efforts might succeed. If it's an essential attribute that can't be removed without killing the patient, then the task is hopeless.
For conservatives, the easy part is to agree with the book's devastating critique of countercultural inanities. The hard part is to know what to think of its authors' political project. A serious Left could be: a welcome change from the gassy self-righteousness of the transformative Left; a newly formidable adversary; or people one can do business with, to borrow Margaret Thatcher's remark about Mikhail Gorbachev. Of course, a serious Left may turn out, instead, to be simply impossible—a contradiction in terms.
Predictably, there's lots of gnashing and thrashing on the Left (and the Right, too) on the subject. Kevin Drum writes a piece that is representative of the Left's point of view, here. A couple of grafs:Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.
The bottom line is the government and prosecutors are required under a Supreme Court ruling known as Brady v. Maryland to provide defendants with all "material" information affecting their case, including derogatory information that could impact the credibility of prosecution witnesses. This includes information that might impact their guilt or their sentence.In a previous post I pointed both of my faithful readers to an article by former Federal Prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy that discusses the points Mr. Drum makes. Let's review:
Another Supreme Court case, Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995) held that the duty of disclosure is not limited to evidence in the actual possession of the prosecutor. Rather, it extends to evidence in the possession of the entire prosecution team, which includes investigative and other government agencies.
Under discovery rules that apply to American criminal proceedings, the government is required to provide to accused persons any information in its possession that can be deemed "material to the preparation of the defense" or that is even arguably exculpatory. The more broadly indictments are drawn (and terrorism indictments tend to be among the broadest), the greater the trove of revelation. In addition, the government must disclose all prior statements made by witnesses it calls (and, often, witnesses it does not call).I'm no lawyer; I have, aside from my divorces, zero experience with the American legal system. Still, as a relatively well-informed and interested citizen, I don't see much, if any, good coming out of the impending legal challenges mounted by lawyers defending accused terrorists. There are some bad actors in the legal biz, two come immediately to mind: Lynne Stewart and Ramsey Clark. Both of these individuals are classic examples of intelligent but misguided (at best) practicing attorneys working against the "greater good" of American society.
This is a staggering quantum of information, certain to illuminate not only what the government knows about terrorist organizations but the intelligence agencies’ methods and sources for obtaining that information. When, moreover, there is any dispute about whether a sensitive piece of information needs to be disclosed, the decision ends up being made by a judge on the basis of what a fair trial dictates, rather than by the executive branch on the basis of what public safety demands.
It is true that this mountain of intelligence is routinely surrendered along with appropriate judicial warnings: defendants may use it only in preparing for trial, and may not disseminate it for other purposes. Unfortunately, people who commit mass murder tend not to be terribly concerned about violating court orders (or, for that matter, about being hauled into court at all).
In 1995, just before trying the blind sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven others, I duly complied with discovery law by writing a letter to the defense counsel listing 200 names of people who might be alleged as unindicted co-conspirators—i.e., people who were on the government’s radar screen but whom there was insufficient evidence to charge. Six years later, my letter turned up as evidence in the trial of those who bombed our embassies in Africa. It seems that, within days of my having sent it, the letter had found its way to Sudan and was in the hands of bin Laden (who was on the list), having been fetched for him by an al-Qaeda operative who had gotten it from one of his associates.
“But having money stolen from us is not the only way in which our identities seem to be under greater assault than for some time. In many ways the most amazing story of 2005 concerned the 15-year-old boy, conceived from donated sperm, who found his anonymous biological father through two internet searches. In possession of nothing more than his own DNA profile and his father’s date of birth and graduate status (presumably supplied to the mother by Spermulike as proof of the youth and genetic quality of her purchase) he checked out matches on FamilyTreeDNA.com, and found two men with similar names. He then fed their names into Omnitrace.com along with what his mother knew — and Bob’s your dad. Some guy who was paid a tenner a shot way back got a call he hadn’t been expecting.”I think Mr. Aaronovitch nails it. We do more to damage our privacy than the government ever could. Any Main Street merchant knows more about you than your Mom, when you come right down to it. Any business owner or potential employer can run an Equifax or Trans-Union check and find out where you live, how big your mortgage is, how much you make today and how much you made ten years ago…on and on, ad nauseum. These folks, and others, have the power to delve into your life, with or without your permission. And we’re worried about the government reading our e-mail?
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harrison County, the home of Biloxi, and Jackson County, where Pascagoula is located, each had about 10 million cubic yards of debris to clean up. Both counties took up the federal government on its offer to foot the bill.If anyone is surprised at this revelation they've either been in the cave way too long or else they are politicians with "(D)" after their names. Here's a wonderful illustration:
But while Harrison County and all but one of its cities hired contractors on their own, Jackson County and its cities, at the urging of the federal government, asked the Army Corps to take on the task. Officials in Jackson County said it was a choice they had regretted ever since.
The cleanup in Jackson County and its municipalities has not only cost millions of dollars more than in neighboring counties, but it is also taking longer. The latest available figures show that 39 percent of the work was complete in Jackson County, while 57 percent was done in Harrison County and its cities that are managing the job on their own, according to federal records.
In Hancock County, Miss., where the Army Corps is in charge, contractors in protective suits carefully open refrigerators and meticulously clean them out, sanitizing the interiors with a cleaning solution. Workers remove Freon gas. Quality-control supervisors watch every step. Army Corps officials would not say how much the operation costs, but in Louisiana they are paying more than $1.8 million to process and dispose of these so-called white goods.I've thought, from time to time, that a biohazard suit would be appropriate attire for cleaning out my fridge. Whereas I'm just joking, the Feds apparently are serious. Never underestimate the power of a bureaucracy to drive costs up and slow things down.
In neighboring Harrison County, once the refrigerators are dropped off at a landfill, the government's financial obligation ends. A recycling contractor, eager to get the scrap metal, removes the Freon. In most cases, the spoiled food is removed by lifting the refrigerator atop a lined dumpster and shaking it. No biohazard suits are involved.
Some local officials said they were glad that the Army Corps was spending the extra time and money.
"Twenty years from now I don't want young mothers giving birth to kids with birth defects because we found out we did not do proper dumping," said Representative Gene Taylor, a Democrat from Bay St. Louis, Miss., where the Army Corps is in charge of cleaning up.
Lompoc AFSPulitzer Prize winner Quindlen had given voice to the Cultural Sputter of the bien-pensant, a well-known reaction afflicting people of taste forced to live in a world of vulgarities. It’s an act with a very long pedigree. Eighteenth-century aristocrats by the palaceful were appalled when professional writers first appeared. Writing in exchange for money, they thought, would be the ruin of letters. John Ruskin, King of Victorian Sputterers, couldn’t stand Rembrandt because the Dutch master’s paintings lacked "dignity": All those paintings of self-satisfied, bulbous-nosed burghers made Ruskin gag.and this:
The sputter is endlessly adaptable. A notorious space-age version choked Norman Mailer half to death. He was watching astronaut Alan B. Shepard walking on the moon in 1971, when Shepard suddenly took out a secretly stowed golf club and launched a drive at the lunar horizon. Mailer was spiritually mortified. Humankind should have been humbled, literally on its knees, as it entered the cathedral of the universe; instead it drove golf balls through its windows. What’s the matter with people? Give them infinity, and they make it a fairway. Give them liberty, and they reach for a Lucky. Or they go shopping.
The West has never been comfortable with its own cultural vulgarity. Such anxiety is arguably strongest in the United States, which has long nursed a cultural inferiority complex vis-à-vis more-established British and European practitioners of high art. Popular, commercial forms are not thoughtful. Rather, they are temporary, noisy, intense, ecstatic. They are sensual and disruptive. Because they are frequently set in motion by powerless and even despised outgroups, they appear subversive. They not only threaten social morals, but challenge established power relationships.
The result is that such ecstatic forms are attacked not only by the West’s left-liberal critics for their commercial origin, but by the West’s conservatives for their disruptive power. Cultural ecstasy may have billions of participants, but it hardly has a single friend.
For the last 200 years, vulgar forms and subcultures have often set off a series of "moral panics" among those who perceive a threat to their own cultural power and status. The popular novel, when it first appeared, set one off. So did penny dreadfuls and pulps. So did melodramatic theater. So did the music hall. So did the tabloid press, and the waltz, and ragtime, and jazz, and radio, movies, comic books, rock music, television, rap, and computer games.
All of these -- and more -- led contemporary critics to declare the end of civility, to worry over some newly identified form of supposed "addiction" (to novels, to TV, to video games, to pornography, to the Internet, to Pokémon, etc.), to announce that the coming generation was "desensitized," and to rail about childishness and triviality. It’s the cultural sputter that never ends.
NY TIMES: CLAUS OK'D ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE
The New York Times reported today that Polar authorities are engaged in a secret program to conduct warrantless monitoring of private communications and activities among U.S. minors. Anonymous sources within the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency said the program, codename "Operation Coal Lump," dates as far back as 1879, and recieved approval at the highest echelon of Polar administration, including President Santa Claus himself.
The disclosure of the program sparked an immediate furor among civil libertarian organizations and brats right groups. ACLU spokesman Dan Knaggs said "that chill in the air isn't December -- it's Big Brother Kriss Kringle unconstitutionally watching, and following, and evaluating your every move."
Josh Cleland, 9, a spokesboy for the Council For Misbehaving Americans, decried the program as "a looming threat to the economic rights of millions of young Americans, many of whom may be guilty of nothing more than a wedgie or Indian burn of self defense."
EXPERTS WARN ON SEASONAL RAGE TRIGGERSAnd you know there's MORE.
The American Psychology Association released its annual ranking of causes for seasonal rage today, and for the seventh consecutive year the list was topped by the "Lexus Holiday Sales Event" commercial.
"For whatever reason, exposure to this stimulus can transform a normal, well adjusted adult into a cauldron of destructive psychopathy, harboring lurid fantasies of sneaking through the snow on Christmas morning to destroy bow-tied gift luxury cars with a tire iron," said APA scientist Rachel Sternthal. "This is usually accompanied by associated desires to hide in the bushes and laugh maniacally when the recipient uncovers his or her eyes to find $70,000 of smashed precision engineering burning to a crisp in the snowy driveway of their McMansion."
Great God A’mighty what was wrong with meIris Dement's "Wasteland of the Free"
I know the money’s good but buddy can’t you see
You can’t take it with you and that ain’t no lie
I don’t wanna let ‘em get me I’m too young to die
If I ever get home to Houston alive
Then I won’t drive a truck anymore
We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we winJohn Fogerty's "Deja Vu All Over Again" (2003)
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he's standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
(Chorus)
While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Day by day I hear the voices risingKPFT publishes their playlists, but they're a week in arrears. You can see Larry's entire oeuvre here. A casual scan of the playlist(s) reveals Larry's an equal-opportunity protester. Granted, most of his songs are decidedly anti-right-wing, anti-war, but there's a lot of social-ills protest, too. Like Brando replied when asked "Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" Larry will say "Whattaya got?" This is good. You don't want to be a one-note anything in life, let alone a one-note protester!
Started with a whisper like it did before
Day by day we count the dead and dying
Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score
Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio
Could your eyes believe the writing on the wall
Did that voice inside you say
I've heard it all before
It's like Deja Vu all over again
Ms Renshaw may be the most unusual social worker in Britain: as head of player services for Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery, her job is to offer advice and support to people who have become suddenly, unexpectedly and fabulously rich. She is Britain’s foremost wealth counsellor.We've all heard stories of suicides, rapid descent into alcohol/drug abuse, divorce, and other calamities befalling the winners of big lottery jackpots. "Wealth counseling" sounds like a pretty good idea on the surface, but the ol' adage about horses and water immediately comes to mind.
A POLE ON MSNBC STATES 87% of RESPONDANCES WANT BUSH IMPEACHED. WAKE UP ROYAL SCRIBES, THE MINISTERY OF INFORMATION (US MAIN STREAM MEDIA) IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH AMERICA. TIME FOR A LITTLE SOVIET STYLE ROTATION??? FOR ALL OF YOU????Perhaps the commenter saw Zbigniew Brzezinski on MoreStoriesNotingBushCrimes and confused him with a real Pole? Nah. Don't think so.
Posted by: IMPEACH BUSH Dec 24, 2005 8:34:39 AM
Yesterday on dailykos (I believe the most popular Democratic website), there was a piece entitled Slouching Toward Kristallnacht, outlining all of the eery parallels between pre-nazi Germany and contemporary America. For the hundreds of frightened posters that commented on the article, it is not a matter of if, but when Bush suspends the charade of democracy and imposes a fascist state on us. As Kos himself wrote, "It won't come in the same form. It never does. But it's coming. The lure of fascism is too powerful for men like the ones currently pissing all over our Constitution."Dr. Helen writes a note to the American Psychological Association:
I am writing because I would like to stay a part of the APA--but when I see articles advocating diversity--but only if one is politically correct--I feel discouraged about the future of psychology. Left leaning politics may fly within APA and the academic world but in the real world--there is a mixture of people who share all kinds of world views. How does it help our profession, its students, and our clients when we tout diversity but only if it is the left leaning kind?Varifrank offers Congratulations (to) Time Magazine, wherein he takes exception to Time's "Person(s) of the Year" (Boy, does he ever!) and offers some alternatives...
Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president's actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.
On Dec. 18, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released a 250-page report detailing Bush's misconduct and, on his Web site, called for the creation of a select committee to investigate "those offenses which appear to rise to the level of impeachment." Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said in a radio interview that he would support trying Bush. "If there is a move to impeach the president, I will sign that bill of impeachment," he said.The moonbats over at DU are all over this, as one might imagine. I spent some time this morning reading a few threads on this subject and it's all too typical. No link; I won't dignify the batards by linking to them.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) sent a letter to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), asking that the House pass the new version of the budget by unanimous consent, ending the need to summon lawmakers back to Washington.{sigh} Where to begin? I've not seen any counter-proposals (other than repealing tax cuts) from the Democrats on how to rein in federal spending. Instead we have "a coalition of labor unions and liberal interest groups" who seem to be driving the Democrats. But, what's new? The interesting thing about these so-called budget cuts is the "cuts" reduce the growth of spending over the next few years, rather than implement actual spending reductions. And these proposed cuts are modest, at best.
But even before the request, Pelosi had promised to force another vote.
"Democrats believe this Republican bill has the wrong priorities," she said in a statement. "That is why we will request a recorded vote where all members return to Washington to make clear their values to the American people."
A coalition of labor unions and liberal interest groups immediately swung back into gear, drafting a list of 18 House Republicans in hopes of persuading eight to change their vote.
"Well you see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.Or single malts. Or martinis.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
The bill for being thoroughly plugged in to entertainment and communications runs more than $200 a month for a third of the households in this country. Four in 10 spend between $100 and $150 a month, according to the poll of 1,006 adults taken Dec. 13-15.
Sounds about right. I'm right at $150.00 a month when you add up the bills from cable TV (basic, not digital), internet (a 300Kb connection) and my cell phone (I don't have a land-line for what should be obvious reasons). I don't call myself a "gadget guy." I don't have a BlackBerry, an iPod, a TiVo, a stand-alone DVD player, nor an XBox or equivalent. I don't think I'm a Luddite, either. I just have no need, interest or desire for the things I don't have.
Try as I might (and I tried, believe me) I cannot find the breakdown on this poll. The Ipsos site doesn't have the data and it looks like you need to be a subscriber to get details, anyway. I think the details, rather than the generalities, of this poll would be fascinating!
But cataclysmic changes were ahead, and their harbinger was President Jimmy Carter’s acquiescence in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Here, for the first time, Congress and the courts undertook to regulate the gathering of national intelligence, particularly by electronic eavesdropping, against agents of hostile foreign powers. In the Nixonian afterclap, it was adjudged that the executive could not be trusted unilaterally to wield this power, which might secretly be used against political opponents.And this:
Of course, such wiretapping was already illegal, and the Nixon experience had amply demonstrated the political price to be paid for engaging in it. No matter. Henceforth, the executive branch would not be allowed to use whatever tactics it, as the branch with the most expertise and information, determined were necessary to protect the nation. Rather, it would be compelled to go to a federal FISA court newly created for the purpose, and, as with the procedure for criminal wiretaps, it would need to establish probable cause that the target was an agent of a foreign power. Electronic surveillance would be permitted only if the judges approved.
The impact on intelligence collection was serious. Previously, it would have been laughable to suggest that foreign enemy operatives had a right to conduct their perfidies in privacy—the Fourth Amendment prohibits only "unreasonable" searches, and there is nothing unreasonable about searching or recording people who threaten national security. (The federal courts have often recognized that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.) Now, such operatives became the beneficiaries of precisely such protection. Placing so severe a roadblock in the way of a crucial investigative technique necessarily meant both that the technique would be used less frequently (thereby reducing the quantity and quality of valuable intelligence) and that investigative resources would have to be diverted from intelligence-collection to the rigors of compliance with judicial procedures (which are cumbersome).
This was only the start of the debacle. Courts and the organized defense bar soon began to ply the FISA statute with hypothetical governmental abuses. What if, they worried, a national-security wiretap yielded evidence of an ordinary crime—not an unlikely event, given that terrorists tend to commit lots of ordinary crimes, including money laundering, identity fraud, etc. This was no problem under FISA as written: intelligence agents could simply pass the information to agents of the criminal law, who could then use the damning conversations in court. But what if such law-enforcement agents, for their part, were to try to use FISA as a pretext to investigate crimes for which they themselves lacked probable cause to secure a regular criminal wiretap?
In one sense, the suggestion was not out of line—wiretap conversations are devastating evidence, and defense lawyers routinely strain to have them suppressed. But the notion was logically absurd. If a criminal investigator was going to act corruptly, it would be far easier for him to fabricate evidence showing probable cause for a regular wiretap (by pretending, for example, to have an anonymous source who had bought illegal drugs from the target) than to trump up a national-security angle necessitating an additional set of internal approvals. Nor was there any indication that such chicanery was actually afoot. But reality is rarely an obstacle for those who see life as an ongoing law-school seminar. Gradually, courts rewrote FISA, grafting onto it a so-called "primary purpose" test requiring the government to establish not only probable cause that it was targeting operatives of a foreign power but also that its real reason for seeking surveillance was counterintelligence, not criminal prosecution.
In 1995, just before trying the blind sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven others, I duly complied with discovery law by writing a letter to the defense counsel listing 200 names of people who might be alleged as unindicted co-conspirators—i.e., people who were on the government’s radar screen but whom there was insufficient evidence to charge. Six years later, my letter turned up as evidence in the trial of those who bombed our embassies in Africa. It seems that, within days of my having sent it, the letter had found its way to Sudan and was in the hands of bin Laden (who was on the list), having been fetched for him by an al-Qaeda operative who had gotten it from one of his associates.The conventional wisdom is our intelligence apparatus is broken. The truth is we probably don't know the half of it. Mr. McCarthy provides a brief history of, and the reasons behind, the decline of the U.S. intelligence community. He also offers opinions and specific recommendations about what can and should be done to fix it. An invaluable read.
