http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.asp...

Weiner just lived up to his name by withdrawing his amendment, which would have substituted single-payer for the House bill favored by Democratic leaders. That coward sickens me right now even more than Obama, Pelosi, Emanuel, Hoyer, and Reid put together.

Look out Paula! Looks like you've got some competition. Although, I confess to being curious: which of you will be better hunting down embarrassing blog comments posted by your boss' political enemies? Shutting down bloggers focused upon issues the rest of the media ignores? Cause that's really what all this mostly unConstitutional and anti-democratic domestic spying monitoring is all about.

From the Chicago Tribune (with pictures of the chilldren who died in the fire, the house and stills from the investigation video, as well as of Willingham): As far back as 2004, Rick Perry -- who's now become the target of ABC News and maybe CNN's Anderson Cooper too -- refused to consider the possibility, despite scientific evidence, that he'd ordered an execution for an innocent man to go forward. Two days before a state panel on forensic science was to hear further information -- and start work on a report the final version of which would've come out just about in time to torpedo Goodhair's primary campaign against KBH -- the Governor replaced three members of that panel, including the chair, with political cronies. Guess what?

I'm sure you all recall the early days of the NSA Hoovering up all domestic data warrantless wiretapping scandal, when they referred to it as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and assured us that they were only targeting Al-Qaeda operatives.

Naturally, this turned out to be a lie enhanced duplicity technique, because it turns out they were spying on all of us everyday American citizens. Nobody was off the target list, and we were all potential Al-Qaeda operatives.

Now, there's a big hubbub about some sketchy CIA assassination ring, apparently answering to Cheney himself. Nobody's willing to talk about the nitty-gritty details, but it's enough to have even Nancy "off the table" Pelosi spooked or pissed off enough to start publicly discussing how fucked-up it was, whatever "it" was.

The public justification for this shadowy, super-classified, apparently reprehensible death squad?

They were only targeting Al-Qaeda operatives.

Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. Does anyone seriously doubt that what we'll eventually learn is that they formed a group to assassinate American citizens in the National Interest? Consider this, via TPM:

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization...

As for what the program did involve, Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets, and that it went beyond surveillance, but declined to elaborate. He added that, though Cheney may have directly ordered the CIA to keep Congress in the dark, the veep wasn't acting alone. "The approval was from the president," said Cannistraro.

Hmm, I wonder...

I'm not usually this pessimistic about life in Texas, but we're subject to the whims of a once-every-two-years House and Senate at the State level. Like any State, we're also at the mercy of the monied interests.

“This is like a shell game, moving hazardous toxic PCBs from one sensitive location to another,” said Dr. Neil Carman, a chemist with Sierra Club’s Lone Star chapter. “We are concerned about contamination of the Ogallala Aquifer and other aquifers in this dry region of Texas that needs to protect and conserve water for drinking and agricultural uses.”

Just laying this down as a data point:

And then the teacher walked in. He had a gray crew cut, a message-free tank top and shorts, without a Buddhist bead or Sanskrit phrase visible anywhere.

“Come on people, let’s get started,” he said in a New York accent, as if leading a conference call.

Then he cranked up “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin and led the students through a warm-up of sun salutations. Soon he had them stretching into a difficult split pose.

Nobody's talking about it in the news. Polo's not exactly a commonplace, I suppose, anymore than cowhorse contests are.

Something about this story just seems way too wrong to me, though.

The horses suffered pulmonary edema, which means fluid accumulated in their lungs, and cardiogenic shock, (Palm Beach Equine Club veterinarian Dr. Scott) Swerdlin said. They had elevated temperatures and were disoriented but felt no pain.

That's a quote from the LA Times' piece, and it's simple unadulterated bullfeathers. Pulmonary edema induces cardiogenic shock because the lungs overfill and squeeze the heart so hard it can't function. The sensation this induces is NOT painless.

and all three states' legislatures passed resolutions to that effect THIS YEAR in response to "a threat" to the "right to keep and bear arms." At least here in Texas it's just the (usual idiocy from our) Governor mouthing off.
Here's a snippet from the Georgia legislation:

To all those Americans who wish they had the benefits or protection of Canadian citizenship, well, the value of the above has dropped like a stone in recent history, and none so obviously as with the current absurd Abousfian Abdelrazik episode. The poor man has a family in Canada, is a Canadian citizen by refugee asylum, and has been stuck in a Kafkaesque multiyear nightmare starting with imprisonment and torture by the Sudanese government, and ending with his residence at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, which will not offer him a passport to return to Canada.

The phrase "uniquely American" is, to me, key in understanding the ideological predicament of any attempt at efficient delivery of public services in the United States, particularly but not only in the area of health delivery. It represents not merely a nationalistic claim of a need for difference from the effective policy solutions of other countries, but a shorthand for a more specific ideological claim.

As I'm viewing the details of the Big Shitpile unfold (here, here, here, and here, just on the front page of Corrente; make sure to follow some of the comment's links) I see the makings of heroic tale of strength, courage and hopeychanginess developing

Has Grover Norquist succeeded?

The nation is at an economic tipping point. Its weakened and getting weaker. So much so that a supposedly liberal President feels the need to speak repeatedly of "entitlement reform" which, to anyone paying attention, means services to the bottom 80% on the income ladder.

A follow up: Can a well intentioned "fool" (in the ignorant use of the word) lead to as much calamity given dire circumstances as an ill intentioned Grover Norquist type?

Even Fox News admits that $140 million budget item for "volcano monitoring" Bobby Jindal pooh-poohed last night isn't what he claimed. That money is for the United States Geological Survey, which will use it for a variety of purposes -- none of them the sort of boondoggle Jindal evoked, with his sly comment. (Where was his watchfulness when President Bush and his cooperative Republican Congress spent us from a surplus into a multi-TRILLION deficit? Oh, right. Lapping at the trough.)

The money buys monitoring equipment for the US Geological Survey's many tasks, including stream flow watches, mapping, and, yes, keeping tabs on volcanoes, according to Scientific American.

Stream flow? Yeah, you know -- surface water, in the United States -- and whether it's normal flow, low flow, rising or over flood stage. Now maybe Bobby Jindal doesn't care about flooding. After all, he's only the Republican governor of Louisiana, so maybe floods don't bother him. But in Texas, we actually give a damn about public safety.
Including flooding. (For what it's worth, the northwest Brazos River watershed -- I'm nearly at the top of the Double Mountain Fork, where I live doesn't flood very often, but boy howdy, when it does, the thing to do is get out of the way of the water.)

I realize that's not a concept the GOP is strongly interested in, because it does not involve complicated financial maneuvers. It involves saving lives. Still, even if they're not financiers or bankers or insurance moguls, lives matter. Flood is the commonest natural disaster in the United States.

Why wouldn't you want to watch what was happening in streams? Why wouldn't you want to support, oh, the National Weather Service and the Department of Homeland Security's disaster-preparation programs by keeping an eye out for potential fast-rising water? Why wouldn't you want to warn people ahead of a flood, whether of water or lava?

As Mother Jones put it earlier today:

The 'volcano monitoring' part is almost as misleading. According to ProPublica, the relevant portion of the stimulus money is for "U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities." It seems obvious that employing geologists, building facilities, buying equipment, and paying people to map the country all have a stimulative effect. But more importantly, why does Bobby Jindal think monitoring volcanoes is a bad thing for the government to be doing? There doesn't seem to be any immediate way for private enterprise to profit from monitoring volcanoes (maybe selling volcano insurance?), but there is obviously a huge public benefit from making sure volcanoes are monitored: warning people if a volcano is going to erupt. Isn't that obvious?
Apparently not to Bobby Jindal. But, of course, Bobby Jindal is the person who just tried to tell the nation that the problem with the government's response to Hurricane Katrina was that bureaucrats demanded that people have proof of insurance and registration. It wasn't.
(There's no money in the stimulus to save the San Francisco salt marsh mouse, either.)

I mean, it would be to me -- I think saving lives is more important than lying about money.
But I'm not a Republican

It looks like the Pentagon is continuing on its all-out offensive to keep the Guantanamo Bay prison camp open by trying to put cosmetic touches on a prison set up on inherently unconstitutional grounds: indefinite seizure and gaining intelligence by torture.

WASHINGTON, (AFP) – A Pentagon report has found conditions at the controversial Guantanamo prison in line with the Geneva Conventions, but called for the isolation of some inmates to be eased by allowing them more social contact and recreation.

I hope that everyone realizes that the Pentagonian Establishment is very much in the midst, and not at the start of, trying to push back at Obama's promise to close Gitmo, and the left's push for this thing to close since we've known of its existence.

This is why it is so incredibly important that the left push him harder than ever before and constantly to close this house of horrors down, as well as all of the others we know and don't know about, because he's being pushed very forcefully (more forcefully, in fact) from the right to "stay the course" on Gitmo.

Maybe I've missed it around the blogosphere, but seeing as I have four lil nieces and nephews with more on the way, I'm very happy to have found the perfect War on Xmas gift for them, albeit a tad early this year. The reader reviews alone are worth the clickthru. Go for it, Correntians! Be creative- come up with your own New Order for Toddlers Ideas and pitch them to Lego/Playmobil; it's not like there are so many jobs for all us Lucky Duckies that we've got better things to do with our time. Who knows? You could be the next subversive to infect the young, all across the Homeland! I'm still snickering over "deadly nail file."

Law Enforcement Looks to Video Surveillance Networks

2008 may have been The Year of the Large-Scale Wireless Video Surveillance System, as several cities and their police departments joined the growing market, while others expanded existing systems.

These systems stream high-resolution video to monitoring stations and police squad cars from cameras strategically located throughout downtown areas or other high-priority, high-crime districts. The cameras can prove valuable to police and prosecutors for capturing and convicting criminals and as a crime deterrent.

Influential Democrat asks Obama to keep spy chiefs

The comments in Wednesday's Congress Daily by U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat, run counter to the views of his likely Senate counterpart, who has called for a new team.

Reyes said he had recommended to Obama's transition team that CIA Director Michael Hayden and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell be kept in place for at least six months.

Question for the group, asked in honest and open-minded interest:

What "good in the world" can the CIA claim? What, specifically, has it done that makes America safer, and/or the world a better place?

There's a lot of chatter about Obama's pick of Brennan, of whom I don't really know that much, and his experience and position on the use of torture as a valid interrogation technique. I'll leave aside that argument for now (except to say it still shocks me we even have an "arugment" about it, feh) and wonder instead about what we need, what we have and don't have, and what we might and should have, in our premier intelligence agency.

I can run down a pretty long list of CIA failures. Just off the top of my head, they were totally wrong predicting the timing and reasons for the collapse of the USSR; they propped up torturing dictators in South and Central America; they failed to provide anything useful in the criminally misguided effort in Vietnam; they've covered for drug lords and murderers and Nazis, allowing them to go unpunished and even rewarded for their crimes; Osama Bin who?; WMD and Iraq...really, it's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel.

So I have a hard time understanding why some people on the left would bother to defend practically anything or anyone associated with today's CIA. Especially after what I imagine to be the usual contamination with cronies and criminals that has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's treatment of virtually every government agency. Via CQPolitics, comes this little gem which more or less sums up how I feel about the Agency today:

"Almost anyone working at the agency since [Sept. 11] is tainted," says retired CIA veteran Milt Bearden, a former Pakistan station chief, expressing the facts of life.

"If he wants experience, get an old-timer who left before that. Or go with a completely new face, maybe someone like a [Richard] Holbrooke, though I doubt he'd take it."

I know some people who've worked in intelligence, and I'm not trying to paint with an overly large brush. I understand there is a difference between the Directorates of operations and intelligence, the people who work in them, and what they do. I know that there really are Bad Guys in the world who are on a mission to hurt and kill Americans for all the wrong reasons, and that it makes sense of a nation like ours to have eyes and ears in dangerous places, the better to anticipate groups who would bring another 9-11 to our shores.

But I'm also always most interested in results. So I'm asking: are there any that CIA can point to, and recently, that would convince a progressive like me that CIA is not in need of massive housecleaning and investigation? My mind is truly open on this, if anyone wants to step up and defend them.

Hoss makes a good point about this utterly devastating critique from Digby on yet another shitstain excuse for a piece of journalism, but I'd like to make a gooder point, if I may. I actually suffered to read Nooner's entire article, and what struck me was the completely self-absorbed tone and perspective she employed. Which isn't really surprising unless like me you tend to avoid that sort of writing, but still, what does Pegster really mean when she says "Bush kept us safe?"

Surprisingly, even the comment boards at the WSJ took her to task for such a ridiculous and willfully blind assertion of facts screamingly in evidence to the contrary. But she wasn't really talking about "safety" and "national security" in the way that you and I do. She was talking about how Bush has kept Villagers and the very wealthy safe...from us.

If you can stomach it, follow the link at Digby's (I won't give the WSJ linklove here) and read the piece and see if you agree with me. It's all there. Sneering condescension for the new "oh my god he's black!!1!" president who can't possibly be smart enough to govern without the advice and consent of the Village on account of his race, the usual hatred for HRC and her lack of membership in the Kewl Kidz club, the casual dropping of elites status and invitation to the 'right' parties, and most importantly for me, a soulful review of the material culture of her world, in the form of people's (read: people like her) homes. Ah, how I miss being so close to McClean and all those monstrous, sprawling megahomes that would've made Scarlett O'Hara blush, after she married Rhett for his money.

But Noonan's pride and defense of Bush are telling to me, for they reveal what it is she really fears: masses of angry, didn't-go-to-the-right-Ivy, showering after work DFHs and Flyover rubes, beating down her doors in angry mobs, demanding a return for all the money her class has stolen from us, and acting in full command of the rights they've taken away from us. Noonan knows that Terraists will never darken any doorstep that only she and her kind may enter freely. But now that Bush is finally leaving, her nervousness is increasing. Like so many wingers, I have no doubt she sits around in frenzied masturbation, mentally and perhaps otherwise, daydreaming of "Red Dawn" scenarios and "24" episodes, safe in the knowledge that her Hero Bush and the rest of the Terror Warriors will keep her Village cocktail parties Free, just like the Constitution says they should be. But that time is coming to an end, and when she relates the question of Republicans at her party "are still we important?" she really means "do we still have the clout to keep them from coming after us for all our crimes? I'd like to say, "No, It is not safe." We'll see if I get that chance

Obama vows to cut wasteful spending, doesn't rule out tax cuts or new programs

CHICAGO -- Facing a first-year deficit that could approach a staggering $2 trillion, President-elect Barack Obama vowed Tuesday to cut out wasteful spending wherever he finds it but insisted that the scope of the economic crisis demands an extraordinary - and expensive - response.

I will just repeat something I have said before, FISA abuse costs us 8 BILLION dollars a year. We could save a lot of money if we would just honor the constitution.

Ball game season's about to start.

Taco-flavored Popcorn,
spiced cider,, and
sweet smoky spiced pecans are on the menu.

Recipes for basics are linked above. What would you add/substitute?

Oxon Hill Man Fatally Shot at Stop Light

Sean Nicholas Green, 31, had stopped at a red light at about 5:31 p.m. when a man approached his car and fired several shots into the driver's side window of his black Cadillac Deville, police and family members said.

Cpl. Clinton Copeland, a spokesman for Prince George's County police, said detectives do not have a suspect and are still working to establish a motive for the killing. "It doesn't appear to be a carjacking, he was sitting at the light, he wasn't the only car there -- it's weird stuff, a mystery right now," Copeland said. ...

or some other skill of mine you'd rather have, in exchange.

I have been crocheting since I was about 7 years old and can even do it without a hook (if the thread is coarse enough).

Casting on has completely defeated me, though, and if you can't get through that, how do you knit?

Her name is Gracie.

She made it from Florida to Fort Worth in her owner's luggage. Her story is here.
Now, about that Level Orange Alert, Secretary...