Thursday, March 31, 2005

EXCELLENT article

In order to grow, progressives need to systematically expand the universe of access points to the progressive worldview and actively recruit people into the fold. There are three main ways this can be achieved: the development of a vibrant progressive mass media, a revived labor movement, and the organizing of large-scale grassroots social movements in regions and among constituencies that are currently estranged from progressivism. Many astute commentators have written extensively about the first two, so it seems wise to focus here on why the third part of this strategy is important, and what it might entail.

Straight to the top

"Gen Sanchez authorised interrogation techniques that were in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and the army's own standards," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in the union's statement.
"He and other high ranking officials who bear responsibility for the widespread abuse of detainees must be held accountable."

What else is new?

Bush Critics Blocked from Presidential Events
by Ron Hutcheson

WASHINGTON -- Some of President Bush's supporters seem to be going overboard in their efforts to stifle dissent when he comes to town to talk about changing Social Security.
In Denver, three people say they were booted out of a presidential event last week even though they never uttered a peep, apparently because their car bore a bumper sticker denouncing the war in Iraq.
In Fargo, N.D., last month, local Republicans developed a blacklist of more than three dozen residents, including a city commissioner, who were to be banned from Bush's visit.
From left, Leslie Weise, Karen Bauer and Alex Young had tickets to President Bush’s meeting on Social Security reform but say a man they thought was with the Secret Service forced them to leave. (Denver Post Photos/John Epperson) White House officials say they have nothing to do with the exclusions, which they blame on overzealous supporters.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Oooh... a reprimand. That'll set an example.

Pentagon Will Not Try 17 G.I.'s Implicated in Prisoners' Deaths
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: March 26, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 25 -

Despite recommendations by Army investigators, commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, according to a new accounting released Friday by the Army.

Investigators had recommended that all 17 soldiers be charged in the cases, according to the accounting by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. The charges included murder, conspiracy and negligent homicide. While none of the 17 will face any prosecution, one received a letter of reprimand and another was discharged after the investigations.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Tom Delay completely delusional

Some juicy tidbits from his recent talk at a Family Research Council breakfast recently.

"And I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to elevate the visibility of what’s going on in America that Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks."

"This is exactly the issue that’s going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link that up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side."

COMMENT: The fact that Delay has taken illegal funds from lobbyists means that he is a victim of a vast conspiracy? Can you say paranoia?

Interesting that he let this slip ...
'the other side has figured out how to win and defeat the conservative movement'

Also interesting that now, in the glorious pinnacle of neoconservatism, at the absolute apex of their power, they still think they are persecuted victims! They have all the branches of government (and yes, that includes the Supreme Court - 7 of 9 justices were appointed by Republican presidents), yet they are this victimized minority.

Delay is just trying to deflect from his complete lack of morals. Pathetic.

In the same session, Tony Perkins said that the Democrats just want to take out Delay because he wants to outlaw abortion. No, I think that Democrats want to take him out because he is the sleazy pitbull of the GOP, the one who twists arms, funnels funds, the one who embarrassed lobbyists by the blatantness of his open talk about the willingness to be paid off, the one who used federal funds and facilities to interfere in the gerrymandering debacle in Texas... The Democrats lost seats in the House in 2004 exclusively because of that highly questionable redistricting, which Delay arguably masterminded. Abortion?

Crocodile tears.

http://www.au.org/site/PageServer

Thursday, March 24, 2005

The skinny on Austin news

You heard it here first.

This morning, I wrote to the four network affiliates in Austin, KEYE, KVUE, KTBS and KXAN.

I was pleased to get almost immediate responses from three of those four, who were eager to make it crystal clear to me that they do not use video news releases produced by the government under any circumstances.

Frank Volpicella, news director at KVUE (ABC) for five years, says that he has never received any VNRs. 'If we were ever to receive such a tape, our policy is that we would not air it,' he said in via email today.

KEYE, a CBS affiliate, and home of R.L. Turner alumna Elizabeth Dannheim, also stated unequivocally that they did not air VNR's, and wrote that editorial scrutiny there would prevent from this ever happening.

Bruce Whiteaker, news director at KXAN (the NBC affiliate), categorically declared that they do not air video news releases. Further, he wrote that such VNR's have not been clearly labelled in the past, and admitted that they had only avoided airing the spots by luck. The controversy over VNR's has led to a change in practice at CNN and NBC feed services, who now label the spots clearly. The networks still leave it up to the affiliates to decide whether to air such pieces, but KXAN chooses not to.

Whiteaker went on to explain, 'They almost always have an agenda, something to sell--or at the very least have product placement throughout the "story" so that somebody can push that product or agenda. I believe that has a negative impact on our credibility--to pass that information along to you, the viewer, as though it were legitimate news. '

This particular news director seemed passionate about the subject. 'To us, our news content time is too precious and valuable to use it to sell a product or push a government agenda, hidden or not,' he wrote.

At the present time, no reply has been received from KTBC, the Fox affiliate in Austin. If and when they do reply, that information will be posted here. Watch this space.

Thank God: Atkins is on the way out

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?
type=topNews&storyID=7986279

Novak worries about 06

Bob Novak, a man reviled as the outer of Valerie Plame, but certainly one with connections in the GOP, claims that Republicans are worried that they could lose control of the house for the first time since 1994.

"Analysts at the Republican National Committee have sent this warning to the House of Representatives: The party is in danger of losing 25 seats in the 2006 election and, therefore, of losing control of the House for the first time since the 1994 election."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/
cst-edt-novak201.html

See also what Kos has to say:
http://www.dailykos.com/section/Elections_2006

Given their lackluster poll numbers (see below), they may have reason to worry.

Personally, I think that the Dems will make serious gains in narrowing the gap to near-equity in both the house and senate in 2006, but will probably not retake control. A lot can happen in 18 months, and Americans prefer a balance of powers to the virtual one-party state we have going on now.

I do predict, however, that the Dems will take 2 out of 3 in 2008: House, Senate, Presidency, as there is a general pendulum swing towards the center and a sense of inevitability about the end of the Bushening emerges...

What do you think? Any predictions?

Dark Materials movie to be watered-down

References to God and the Church are to be expunged from the film version of Philip Pullman's Amber Spyglass (also known as Northern Lights).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4077987.stm

Zut alors!

Doudou the French plush stuffed animal (maybe a little sheep) is coming to Scotland!

Please tell me in the comment space below where you want to see Doudou visit in Scotland.

See Doudou in France, Sweden, Croatia and Morocco, at

http://viededoudou.blogspot.com

Public souring on Republican government

CBS News Poll, March 21-22, 2005
"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?"
Approve 43%
Disapprove 48%
Unsure 9%

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?"
Approve 34%
Disapprove 49%
Unsure 17%

CNN/ USA Today/ Gallup Poll, March 22, 2005
"Do you approve or disapprove of the way each of the following has handled the case involving Terri Schiavo?

George W. Bush
Approve 31%
Disapprove 52%
Unsure 17%

Republicans in Congress
Approve 26%
Disapprove 47%
Unsure 27%

Stop[ government-produced fake news

Contact your local tv news team, find out if they are airing the government-made spots, and if they are, tell them to stop. Here's the info:

KVUE-TV(ABC)
Ms. Patti Smith (!!!)
Austin, TX 78766
(512) 459-6521
psmith@kvue.com

KEYE-TV(CBS)
Mr. Gary Schneider
Austin, TX 73301
(800) 563-9742
keyetv@keyetv.com

KXAN-TV(NBC)
Mr. Carlos Fernandez
Austin, TX 78767
(512) 476-3636
carlos.fernandez@kxan.com

KTBC-TV(FOX)
Mr. Danny Baker
Austin, TX 73301
(512) 495-7770
dbaker@fox7.com

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Sample of the previous

Alternative Dictionary: French
MALPT! (Expletive) Used to wish someone tremendous good luck note Abbreviation for the phrase "Merde A La Puissance Treize!" which is translated as "Shit to the thirteenth power". Origin unknown. Used as a friendly term. Example: a friend of yours is about to take an exam. You would say "MALPT!" to wish him well!

Be a cultured cusser

Check out this entertaining website:
http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/

Vigilante gang in Manchester beats innocent disabled man to death, believing him a sex offender

A murder investigation was under way yesterday after a gang of men near Mr Cooper's home at Heywood wrongly convinced themselves he was a paedophile and beat him to death at his flat.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/
crime/story.jsp?story=622789

Liberals and Conservatives Unite Against Patriot Act

Five Reasons Conservatives Should Support a Robust Debate on the Patriot Act:

1. The Fourth Amendment - Search and seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
2. Section 213 of the Patriot Act enables the government to get court authorization to secretly search a person’s home or office, secretly seize their possessions, and not inform the person of the search or seizure for weeks or months. Secret searches violate Americans’ Fourth Amendment freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
3. Section 215 of the Patriot Act enables the government to a rubber stamp, secret court process to collect medical, financial, library, and other personal records such as firearms purchases, whether or not you are suspected of a crime related to national security. By enabling the government to collect personal information without strong evidence of crime, it not only violates Americans’ Fourth Amendment freedoms, but removes traditional checks and balances on government power.
4. The Patriot Act should be focused on real terrorists, not Americans critical of government policy. But, section 802 of the Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism as “any act that is dangerous to human life,” involves a violation of any state or federal law, and is intended to influence government policy or coerce a civilian population. This overbroad definition could sweep in pro-life demonstrators, among others.
5. The extraordinary powers granted to law enforcement by the Patriot Act can and will be used by subsequent administrations, including those with which we may disagree. None of us can predict how those powers might be used or abused. One branch of government shouldn’t be given virtually unfettered power over when and how the government can intrude on our right to privacy.

http://www.checksbalances.org/

Groups Urge Partial Lapse Of Patriot Act
Bloomberg NewsWednesday, March 23, 2005; Page A06
An unusual coalition of conservative groups and the American Civil Liberties Union opened a public campaign yesterday to scale back the enhanced surveillance powers granted to law enforcement after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The alliance, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, urged Congress to let sections of the USA Patriot Act expire at year's end and modify what it called other "extreme provisions" of the law. Sixteen provisions, all related to surveillance powers, will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress extends them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/articles/A58068-2005Mar22.html

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Turks aren't against America, just don't like Bush

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=6355

New survey shows that 74% of Turkish public sees Turkey and US as 'allies', 20% as 'partners' or 'friends', only 6% as 'enemies'.

16 % consider themselves 'anti-American'; only 4% say they 'hate American people'.

74% say that the Turkish people are not an enemy of America.

91% do not approve of Bush's policies; only one-half of one percent approve.

69% said that Bill Clinton was the most successful leader for world peace and security.

Gruess Gott!

Rising from the ashes of Goering's old house at Berchtesgaden, and using much of Hitler's old backyard ('Eagle's Nest'), it's ...

a Holiday Inn! (well, technically it's an 'Intercontinental Hotel Resort').

a sobering moment, let us bow our heads, lest we forget...

http://www.tagungshotel.com/hometagung.
php?Kundenid=1092737122&Language=EN

"Sit back and relax in comfortable leather armchairs and enjoy a traditional cocktail or a brandy or whiskey from one of the most spectacular collections in the whole of the region and a cigar from the hotel´s own walk in humidor."

http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/ic/1/en/hd/zceha

And there's no need to feel guilty while smoking your Cuban and drinking your Scotch, because it comes with its own Holocaust Museum:

"A couple hundred yards from the hotel itself is a modest two-story Documentation Center, with a permanent exhibit on the history of the area, including the Nazis' appropriation of Obersalzberg."

http://travel2.nytimes.com/mem/travel/article-page.html?res=9B0CE0D6153DF935A35750C0A9639C8B63

https://ssl.sueddeutsche.de/reise/artikel/398/48350/

More from the Independent:
by Jonathan Margolis
http://travel.independent.co.uk/europe/
western/story.jsp?story=618042

I was, you see, checking in as the first, and possibly last, Jew to be a guest at a beautiful, newly built, £70m InterContinental Resort Hotel at, er, Berchtesgaden - Hitler's beloved holiday home in the German Alps, near the Austrian border.

Pristine and modern, a complete contrast to the standard cuckoo-clocks-and-Eva Braun's-knickers twee Alpine hotel style, the newest jewel in the crown of the British InterContinental Hotel Group, opened just last week. It looks, from the outside, like a software company's Colorado HQ. Inside, it is modernist, with a dozen shades of brown furnishings and fixtures, stylistically cool to the point of being a bit chilly. There's even a little style joke in the lobby - a display of the mandatory animal antlers, but these made of modishly twisted shiny metal, sort of Philippe Starck does glühwein.

The Berchtesgaden InterContinental is painfully trendy. There's no hint of Wiener schnitzel on the restaurant menu. In the spa, there are rooms for different massage techniques, plus one marked "Meditation", where you can think things over while staring at a large crystal that changes colour.

Perhaps the management of the ICH Group down in Windsor should spend an hour or two in the Meditation room, because they're suffering a bit of corporate stress right now as the world's press sniggers at their courageous/foolhardy decision to stick a huge and expensive hotel in a town with a near-unique PR problem.

Berchtesgaden was more than just somewhere that the Führer liked chucking on his lederhosen, taking the air, walking the Alsatians and watching old movies. A mountainous peninsula of Bavaria surrounded, with duly ponderous symbolism, by his native Austria, the Führer cast it as the embodiment of the whole Germanic Volk myth, and hence the spiritual home of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Berchtesgaden was where the Führer dictated half of Mein Kampf, received world leaders, and directed much of the course of world history, Holocaust included. It served as the Third Reich's second, and, for months at a time, principal seat of government. Even the mountains were tainted. Up on top of one, Martin Bormann, Hitler's disgusting little private secretary - a Nazi so rank and servile that even Hermann Goering referred to him as "the dirty pig" - built Hitler, as a 50th-birthday present, a summer house, The Eagle's Nest, unaware that Adolf was terrified of heights. Hitler hardly ever used the place, and it is now a restaurant serving a particularly fine Jäger schnitzel at just €12.70.

.........

So, as I was going to my room, I started on the lyrics for the opening song to my successor to The Producers, "The Hoteliers". A chorus of brown-suited bellhops singing, "We're the Volk who burned the Reichstag / But be sure and have a nice Tag," was as far as I got before sitting on my bed and wondering what exactly I was doing here. Was it creepy to sleep in Hitler's garden, where Bormann and Goering literally strutted their stuff? Well, to be honest, you sort of forget about it. The rooms have more Lebensraum than the Sudetenland, the plumbing is of the gods, the duvets are, as in all German hotels, blissful, and, frankly, I had a magnificent dinner and slept like a top.
........

But there is little of the Don't Mention the War syndrome in these parts; it's actually difficult to stop people referring to it. The Bavarian government has built a superb little museum a few hundred metres from the hotel, which even on weekdays, with five feet of snow, is rammed with people from all over Germany and Austria - and not all of them in school parties. The museum uses audio-guiding technology boldly stamped "Made in Israel". And Berchtesgaden people, even as supporters, almost to a man, of "moving on", tend to be doughty advocates of the Jewish state. The Israeli bobsleigh team, known as the Frozen Chosen, were in town for a competition a fortnight ago, and were reportedly cheered to the rafters by elderly locals.

The hotel, too, does its corporate best not to shy away from the bleedin' obvious. In every bedside cabinet is the usual Gideon's Bible, plus a 600-page volume on the history of Nazism and the region - Die tödliche Utopie (The Deadly Utopia). All the staff, even the cleaners, underwent police checks to root out Nazi and neo-Nazi connections. All have been on history courses and had to sign an addendum to their contract stating that they support the democratic ideals of the Federal German state. Even the InterContinental's business model has been designed, so the management says, to exclude the dread possibility of a neo-Nazi group managing to book it for a convention - the price mechanism has been used to see off this ugly scenario: rooms start at £160 and rise to £1,700 for a suite.

It's official: GM crops harm wildlife

"Yet another nail was hammered into the coffin of the GM food industry in Britain yesterday when the final trial of a four-year series of experiments found, once more, that genetically modified crops can be harmful to wildlife.

The study was the fourth in a series that has, in effect, sealed the fate of GM in the UK - at least in the foreseeable future. They showed the ultra-powerful weedkillers that the crops are engineered to tolerate would bring about further damage to a countryside already devastated by intensive farming.

Only one of the four farm-scale trials, which have gone on for nearly five years, showed that growing GM crops might be less harmful to birds, flowers and insects than the non-GM equivalent - and even that was attacked as flawed, because the weedkiller the particular conventional crop required was so destructive it was about to be banned by the EU."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/
environment/story.jsp?story=622479

Monday, March 21, 2005

Dallas is a city who'll walk on you when you're down...

The Big D

Now, the number one city in America for crime, number 2 in murder, and number 4 in assaults and rapes!

The Houston Chronicle gloats:

"According to the statistics examined by The Dallas Morning News, Dallas residents were 42 percent more likely to have their homes or businesses broken into last year than people in Houston."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/rssstory.mpl/
metropolitan/3093199

Will Wolfowitz Stand?

Well, Europe isn't happy about it, especially on the heels of Bush's recent nomination of a rabid UN-hater as ambassador to the UN. Didn't take Bush long to undo all the goodwill of his recent charm offensive, did it? Did anyone have bets on that one?

(from the Financial Times:)
"The Netherlands hinted at reservations on Sunday about Washington's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank, saying it would be better to have a wider field of candidates."

Meanwhile, the EU 'invited' (summoned?) the Wolf to Brussels to convince them that he was capable of leading an agency that is supposed to be there to help lift the developing world out of poverty.

"Paul Wolfowitz, the US's nominee to head the World Bank, has been invited to Brussels to meet the European Commission and calm nerves about his candidacy. Louis Michel, European commissioner for development, yesterday invited Mr Wolfowitz to share his vision of the bank's future before its shareholders vote on his appointment.
Mr Michel, who made his decision after consultation with José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, said: "I am looking forward to meeting Mr Wolfowitz in Brussels to listen to his ideas on development, the main challenges ahead and his vision for the World Bank as a major actor."

In the UK, Gordon Brown seeks to shore up support for Wolf O'Witz

"Gordon Brown is seeking the fullest possible discussion between the US and developing countries over Washington's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as the new World Bank chief, believing it is important to achieve a broad international consensus over the appointment. "

progressionsession to the Tories: Don't Cross the Gypsies

"Michael Howard was accused yesterday of "tapping into the deepest vein of bigotry in our society" as he tried to push the issue of unauthorised Gypsy camps into the centre of the pre-election political battle.
The Tory leader will deliver a speech tomorrow focusing on 1,855 Gypsy and traveller families who have bought and developed plots of lands where they can camp without obtaining planning permits in advance.
In the past Mr Howard has vehemently denied wanting to make race an election issue, but that is a charge he will face because of his remarks about Gypsies and travellers.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/
politics/story.jsp?story=621889

Delorean's Flux Capacitated

John Z. DeLorean, 80, the brilliant but troubled automaker who arguably was as flamboyant as his car designs, died March 19 at a hospital in Summit, N.J., after a stroke.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A52616-2005Mar20.html

U.S. Catholic Bishops to launch crusade against death penalty

"Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, who played a leading role in developing the new campaign, said the bishops sense that public opinion is shifting against capital punishment, partly because genetic testing has proved that scores of death-row inmates were wrongfully convicted. "

Because of the nuance in the church's teaching, McCarrick said, the bishops will not argue that capital punishment is inherently immoral. "Our job is to try to persuade our Catholic people and everybody of good will that the death penalty in America at this time is not necessary, it's not useful and it's not good," he said. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
A52089-2005Mar20.html

Air America in Texas

Hey, Texans! Can I have some feedback here? What do you think of Air America: Awesome America or Bore America? Or, like me, is it just those bizarre commercials that you can't stand?

"Get into the action with (bizarre product name here)! Buy our expensive gadget - it's just like swinging a real baseball bat!" (Or you could just go buy a real baseball bat for a fraction of the price)...

Anyhoo, Air America Radio is on the air now in

DALLAS KXEB 910 AM
AUSTIN KOKE 1600 AM
CORPUS KCCT 1150 AM

For the rest of you progressionsession fanatics, here's some more info:

SAN FRANCISCO 960 AM KQKE
SEATTLE 1090 AM KPTK
CINCINNATTI WCKY 1530 AM
BOSTON WKOX 1200 AM
WXKS 1430 AM
NEW YORK WLIB 1190 AM

Social Insecurity Continued

Time Poll, March 15 - 17, 2005

"Is there a crisis or is this just a scare tactic?"

There's a crisis 43%
It's a scare tactic 48%
Neither/ unsure 6%

Source: www.pollingreport.com

People are sick and tired of being manipulated, spun and lied-to. People voted for Bush because they wanted a straigh-shooter. What they got instead is the most media-managed president in US history.

Socially Insecure

Newsweek Poll, March 17-18, 2005.

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling Social Security?"

Approve 33%
Disapprove 59%
Unsure 8%

Bush League Poll

President's approval rating slip slidin' away...

Newsweek Poll, March 17- 18, 2005.
Approval 45%
Disapproval 48%
Don't know 7%

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Blair to scrap the crap school dinners, but it is it an election year ploy?

"In a response to the plea from TV chef Jamie Oliver for a 'school dinner revolution', the Prime Minister will say that school kitchens will be rebuilt and equipped so dishes can be cooked from scratch, while dinner ladies are given 'culinary skills' to help them create appetising menus."

"The crux, however, will be its response to the uproar over the quality of school dinners triggered by Oliver's programme, which followed the chef and father of two as he tried to change menus for pupils in Greenwich, south-east London."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/
0,6903,1441962,00.html

Quoth Blair:

"We're going to take action as well to meet concern over school meals, something, from going round the country, I know is worrying parents. We are already cutting the salt, fat and sugar content in school meals and we'll soon announce details of the new School Food Trust, including substantial funding to enable it to assist schools nationwide. It will draw on the remarkable work of Jamie Oliver in schools, of the Soil Association in encouraging the use of organic and local produce in school meals, and on the best advice on nutrition and eliminating processed foods.

"The new 'building schools for the future' programme, which, after last week's budget, will start systematically renovating primary and secondary schools nationwide, will improve kitchens and dining areas. There will be better training and qualifications to support the valuable work of catering staff. It may take a little time to change children's tastes but it will be worth the effort if we can get them enjoying healthy and good-quality food at school. We will also ask Ofsted to inspect the quality of school meals. "

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/
0,6903,1441871,00.html

Term 2: the Bushening continues its downhill trajectory

A new ABC News Poll (March 17-18, 2005):

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling Social Security?"
Approve 33%
Disapprove 59%
Unsure 8%

"Who do you trust more on the issue of Social Security: President Bush or Democrats in Congress?"
President Bush 33%
Congressional Democrats 44%
Both equally 3%
Neither/ unsure 20%

Source:
http://www.pollingreport.com/social.htm

Thanks to Scotty P.

For sacrificing his mental and physical well-being for our enjoyment here at progressionsession.

We all wish him a happy hangover and speedy recovery from the trials of SXSW 2005.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Why do conservatives hate America?

They are bent on destroying America's good name around the world, and at home they leave schools underfunded and want to destroy the most successful social program in our history. They are undermining the civil liberties of American citizens, the legal safeguards entrenched in our jurisprudential system, and the checks and balances designed by our founding fathers to prevent tyranny from ever taking hold in our land.

In the words of George Orwell, I understand how, I just don't understand why.

I guess conservatives just hate the American way of life.

Kirsty MacColl - still no justice

Basically what happened was this: one of Mexico's biggest business owners, Guillermo Gonzalez Nova, ran over beloved English/ Irish singer Kirsty MacColl, in his speedboat, in 2000. Basically, he made sure his lacky took the fall, and the local authorities made a mockery of justice, despite eyewitnesses who say Gonzalez Nova was going 15 times the speed limit in the area that was reserved for scuba divers in Cozumel. The lacky was charged less than a hundred dollars for manslaughter.

The excellent BBC documentary, with interviews with Kirsty's ex Steve Lillywhite, their two sons, who witnessed her being chopped up by the boat motor, her boyfriend at the time of the accident, and friends, and Spider Stacy of the Pogues, as well as following her mother to Cozumel in her quest for justice.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/kirsty-maccoll.shtml

Kirsty's mother is still trying to get justice for her death. Here is the justice for kirsty website:
http://www.justiceforkirsty.org/

Is it any wonder?

That people who teach at the level of schools and universities, particularly the ones who teach in the Arts and Humanities, are more liberal? Conservatives want the kind of government that will choke even further the funding of education. Conservatives are responsible for the precipitous drop for public funding of research in these areas, and for the fact that teachers are so underpaid, because you have to tax people if you want the goodies.

Texas is 49th in the country for public funding of education. 49 out of 50. (Mississippi is 50).

49th in education, number one in executions. Could there be a connection here?

Returning to academia, no one is stopping conservative people from becoming teachers and professors, just like no one is stopping liberals from becoming Donald Trump. It just doesn't happen that often. Conservatives don't really believe in funding things like education in history, fine arts, foreign languages. And you expect the people who teach those things to vote Republican, against their self-interest? How many Donald Trumps vote to have their taxes raised?

And even on campuses, these aren't the people with the real power. Like everywhere else, money rules the roost. Business schools, law schools, places researching the prozacs and ritalins of tomorrow - these places have the money and the power.

Arts and Humanities departments are so squeezed, they often can't even hire new people when an old one retires. Their buildings and equipment are out of date, their staff overworked. Their salaries, don't even talk about it.

If the average American middle class Republican really wants the life of a history professor, I challenge them to try and do it for a year. That'll have them running back to their comfortable jobs and their multi-car garages.

Over and matt.

More from the Neocon Nation

In the words of Russell Jacoby:
"If life were a big game of Monopoly, one might suggest a trade to these conservatives: You give us one Pentagon, one Department of State, Justice and Education, plus throw in the Supreme Court, and we will give you every damned English department you want. "

Does a professorial pogrom beckon?

Please reassure me.

"Today's accusations against subversive professors differ from those of the past in several respects. In a sign of the times, the test for disloyalty has shifted far toward the center. Once an unreliable professor meant an anarchist or communist; now it includes Democrats. Soon it will be anyone to the left of Attila the Hun."
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050404&s=jacoby

I am starting to worry that America is on the verge of an academic witch-hunt of mammoth proportions, that this could be the neoMcCarthyist juggernaut we all fear.

Neoconservatism does not tolerate disagreement, much less dissent.

Academia is the only thing left they do not control, the only thing left that has not been completely taken over by commercialization.

They are going to eat us alive.

Matthew

EYES ON THE FRIES

Young Workers in the Service Economy
Low wages, erratic schedules, no health care, work-school conflicts.

This film looks beyond the stereotypes of carefree and undeserving youth to uncover a reality that millions of young working people know all too well: no matter how hard you work and how well you do in school, it can be difficult to stay afloat when you're coming of age in a "McJob" economy.

But there are ways to improve things - and young people are taking the lead.

An interesting new documentary featuring Eric Schlosser and others:
http://www.progressivefilms.org/eyesonthefries.htm

Attack on Science: to the MAX

Imax theaters, mainly in the South, are passing on scientific documentaries on such subjects as volcanos, dinosaurs and undersea life, because they differ with the biblical account of creation.

(From New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/national/19imax.html?ei=5094&en=bac14b20d4620205&hp=&ex=
1111294800&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx
=1111244531-Hg89rrghz1fNmHcif6JVTA

News flash: the Bible is not a science book. Nowhere else on earth outside of the Bible Belt do people have a problem with evolution. Get over it.

Postcards from the Pledge

Teen virginity pledges don't work. We need real sex education, not misinformation about condoms.

"Teenagers who take virginity pledges -- public declarations to abstain from sex -- are almost as likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease as those who never made the pledge, an eight-year study released yesterday found.

"Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they are also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities. "

(from Washington Post)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
A48509-2005Mar18.html

Friday, March 18, 2005


Mmmmm, beer. Go ahead, you know you want some. Don't let me stop you. Posted by Hello

Doudou in Portugal Posted by Hello

Blog Recommendation

Follow Doudou the stuffed animal on her adventures around the world!

http://viededoudou.blogspot.com

St Hung O' Ver's Day

... patron saint of Guinness-related flatulence.

Jamie Oliver making a dent in government

From the Scotsman:
"More than 130 MPs – including 86 Labour backbenchers – have already signed a Commons motion backing Mr Oliver’s Feed Me Better campaign.
They say they are “appalled” that the average cost of a school meal in the state system is just 35p to 45p – a quarter of what is spent in British prisons.
And they call on the Government to outlaw the use of processed food in school lunchtime menus."
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4271754

'Talking about Oliver’s show, Jamie’s School Dinners, Mr Blair said: “It’s very good and shows what can be done. We are setting up an organisation that is going to help advise schools on how to improve their meals." '
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4273248

From the Norfolk Eastern Daily Press:
"More schools are threatening to go it alone in supplying lunches, as pressure mounts for healthier food.A conference is being planned for schools interested in setting up their own arrangements, following alarm over the quality of meals exposed by a national television programme."

http://new.edp24.co.uk

From the Coventry Observer:
Hot on the heels of Channel Four's Jamie's School Dinners, education and health chiefs were set to attend a Food In Schools conference to discuss how schools can encourage youngsters to eat a healthy, balanced diet.
http://www.coventryobserver.co.uk/news/default1.asp?id=791

Thursday, March 17, 2005

It's people like Michael Savage who give America a bad name

Savage Nation: It's not just Rush
Talk radio host Michael Savage: "I commend" prisoner abuse; "we need more"
"[T]ake their deepest fear, the pig, the dog, the woman with the leash, and use it on them to break them!"
"Use ... [l]ittle, ugly women. And let 'em take big strapping Iraqis and put 'em on leashes naked."
"Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices."
Since May 4, Media Matters for America has monitored and analyzed radio host Rush Limbaugh's comments on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel, including his comparison of the abuse to a college fraternity prank; his remark that the U.S. military guards were "having a good time"; and his characterization of the abuse as a "brilliant maneuver."

On May 10, Media Matters for America began monitoring Michael Savage's radio program, Savage Nation, which reaches 6 million listeners per week; we will continue to do so on a daily basis. The following are excerpts from Michael Savage's May 10 and May 11 radio shows, during which he commended the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib (repeatedly referring to it as "Grab-an-Arab" prison); said that "we need more of the humiliation tactics, not less"; and blamed American civilian Nick Berg's death on Senators John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton as well as on The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Savage Nation is syndicated by Talk Radio Network and is the third-largest syndicated radio talk show in the nation. He is the author of two New York Times best-sellers, The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture and The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military -- both published by the conservative WorldNetDaily press WND Books. Savage hosted a short-lived televised version of his show for MSNBC, also called The Savage Nation, before being fired by the cable channel for referring on the air to a caller as a "sodomite" and saying that the caller should "get AIDS and die."
(from mediamatters.org)

One Good Republican

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), the former chairman of the House ethics committee, said yesterday that he will co-sponsor a bill to repeal or revise changes that Republican leaders made to the committee’s procedure at the start of the 109th Congress.

http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/
News/Frontpage/031605/hefley.html

Freedom from Information Act

Historical Records at the National Archives.
Worried that sensitive information may have been improperly declassified in the late 1990s, government agencies took to scrubbing public records at the National Archives and elsewhere, pulling untold thousands of public records for "review" and possible reclassification.
Many 30- or 50-year-old archival collections are a shadow of what they were just a few years ago.
On a recent visit to the National Archives, American University historian Anna Nelson recalled, "I found four boxes of Nixon documents full of nothing but withdrawal cards," signifying records that had been removed. In another collection of Johnson records concerning the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic, "I found a box of 55 withdrawal cards."
Not all archive withdrawals are unwarranted. For instance, documents containing classified nuclear-weapons design information were discovered in otherwise declassified records collections, as this recent DOE report on inadvertent disclosures indicates. But the scope of current withdrawals goes beyond what's necessary and poses arbitrary obstacles to historical research.
from Slate.com

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

People in Britain: Listen to SXSW on Radio 2

Italy to pull out of Iraq

"Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said today that he aimed to begin withdrawing Italy's 3,000 troops from Iraq by September, in a signal that the domestic cost of loyalty to the United States over the war was growing too high. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/international/
middleeast/15cnd-italy.html ex=1268542800&en=b8fd8c1
7cba5c104&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Executive Branch Ignores GAO Finding

White House to Agencies: Ignore GAO's Ruling On 'illegal' TV News Releases
by Ken Herman

WASHINGTON -- The White House, intent on continuing to crank out "video news releases" that look like television news stories, has told government agency heads to ignore a Government Accountability Office memo criticizing the practice as illegal propaganda.

In a memo on Friday, Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the lawyers the White House depends on disagree with the GAO's conclusions.

Accompanying Bolten's memo was a letter from Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who said video news releases "are the television equivalent of the printed press release."

"They can be a cost-effective means to distribute information through local news outlets, and their use by private and public entities has been widespread since the early 1990s, including by numerous federal agencies," Bradbury said.

Comptroller General David Walker of the GAO said Monday that his agency is "disappointed by the administration's actions" in telling agency heads to ignore the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

"This is not just a legal issue, it's also an ethical matter," Walker said. "The taxpayers have a right to know when the government is trying to influence them with their own money."
Bradbury's memo said video news releases are legal and legitimate as long as they don't "constitute advocacy for any particular position or view."

The GAO, in a Feb. 17 memo to agency heads, said its review of video news releases distributed to television stations by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy showed violations of federal law barring the use of government money for propaganda. The GAO said, "Television-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by the government."

Giving no indication that the administration would change its policy, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "It's very clear to the TV stations where they are coming from."
But the GAO, in the Feb. 17 memo from Walker, said that's not enough.

"They are intended to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public by independent television news organizations," Walker wrote. "To help accomplish this goal, these stories include actors or others hired to portray 'reporters' and may be accompanied by suggested scripts that television news anchors can use to introduce the story during the broadcast."

Former White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who held the job in the Clinton administration, said there was a "considerable amount of video news release activity" during those years, but much of it was limited to raw footage."

© 2005 Cox Newspapers, Inc

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0315-05.htm

Tuesday, March 15, 2005


Empire Coffee in Memphis Posted by Hello

For more on the above photo

The small part at the bottom reads "We would instead like to remind the agent that we still have first amendment rights."

http://rivercitymud.blogspot.com/2005/03/
photograph-of-sign-at-empire-coffee.html

http://thepeskyfly.blogspot.com/2005/03/
signing-on-and-on-and-on.html

Monday, March 14, 2005

A petition worth signing

The New York Times yesterday ran a huge expose piece on the Bush administration's use of public funds for the production of 'video news releases': pieces that are indistinguishable from local news segments but made by the Agriculture Department, the State Dept., and the TSA.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruled definitively on Friday that this stuff constitutes 'covert propaganda', which is illegal, and that basically all government offices must cease and desist, forthwith, dude.

The Justice Department sent around a memo saying to ignore the GAO. Accountability doesn't matter, there just, you know, educational documentaries.

The problem is that they have been aired on many local news stations as if they were regular news stories and with no identification that they were produced by the government.

"Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta."

So, let me just say this straight out- Americans are watching news programs that have actually been produced by the government. We used to get really incensed when the Soviets did this.

It's bad enough that big business writes our legislation - in many cases literally writes the bills - now we have news that it made by the government. This has gone too far.

So, sign this petition and tell the FCC to forget about Janet's boobies and start worrying about the fact that our media are becoming - literally- a government mouthpiece.

http://www.stopfakenews.org/?tr=y&auid=761132

Nickel and Dimed - Live!

Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling expose on life at minimum wage level, Nickel and Dimed, is hitting the stage as a play at Austin's State Theatre.

http://www.nickelanddimed.net/

http://www.austintheatre.org/site/
PageServer?pagename=State_Theater

The NRA can go to hell

When I see stories like this...

Weekend of gun violence shocks America
Suzanne Goldenberg and Associated Press in WashingtonMonday
March 14, 2005
The Guardian

A boy aged two was shot in the head by his four-year-old brother after a squabble over a toy and a churchgoer opened fire on fellow worshippers, killing seven of them, in a weekend of gun violence across America.
Police said the two boys had been squabbling in their Houston home when the younger child threw a toy at his brother. The older sibling went into his mother's room and took a loaded gun from her bag, shooting his brother once in the temple. The bullet passed through the child's head.
"The four-year-old was angry ... He went and got the gun, put it to his brother's head and shot the gun," police sergeant Cameron Grysen told the Houston Chronicle.
The boy was reported to be in a critical condition at Houston's Ben Taub hospital.
His older brother did not appear to understand what he had done, Mr Grysen told the paper. "He's wondering where his brother is, and when his brother is coming back," Mr Grysen said.
The boys' mother told police she had bought the gun because of a series of burglaries in her neighbourhood, and that she usually kept it in a safe place. It was unclear whether she will face charges. Under Texas law, children below the age of 10 cannot be charged in a criminal case.

In Wisconsin, a man described by neighbours as a quiet and devout churchgoer opened fire at a weekend service, killing eight people, including himself, and wounding four others.
The shootings took place at a Sheraton hotel just outside Milwaukee, where the Living Church of God congregation meets for services every Saturday. Press reports said yesterday that the gunman paused at least once to reload his handgun as churchgoers sought cover, or tried to protect family members. The dead included two boys aged 15 and 17, a 72-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman. Three men aged from 44 to 58 died in hospital.
Police named the killer as Terry Ratzmann, 44. They said they had not found a clear motive for the killings.
However, officials said they were looking into reports that Ratzmann became upset during a church service a few weeks ago and walked out, and that he also may have been about to lose his job.
About 50-60 people were sitting in a meeting room when Ratzmann walked in from the back and started firing, Police Chief Daniel Tushaus said.
"At this point, we're unable to determine if he had specific targets or he just shot at random," police captain Phil Horter said.
Neighbours said Ratzmann was a devout churchgoer and avid gardener who built his own greenhouse and shared homegrown vegetables with his neighbours.

In Atlanta, a suspect who set off a huge manhunt following the courthouse shootings of a judge, a court stenographer and a police officer is expected to appear in court today. Brian Nichols, 33, surrendered to authorities on Saturday, waving a white cloth. Police said he killed an immigration official and held a woman hostage for hours before giving himself up.

11,000 anonymous

This month the Defense Department released data showing that the official number of U.S. troops "wounded in action" in Iraq has gone over the 11,000 mark. Notably, 95 percent of those Americans were wounded after May 1, 2003.
- Normon Solomon, Newsday

Pathetic

The places some people will stoop to...

FORMER GOP DIRECTOR GETS PRISON TIME FOR PHONE JAMMING
A second Republican figure is headed to federal prison for jamming Democratic telephone lines in New Hampshire on Election Day two years ago.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Former state GOP director Chuck McGee was sentenced Thursday to seven months in prison, fined two thousand dollars and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. He admitted paying a Virginia company to jam lines with computer-generated calls.

McGee's sentence is two months longer than the one handed down last month for Allen Raymond, former president of the Virginia telemarketing company. He, too, pleaded guilty.

The man accused of orchestrating the entire affair is James Tobin of Bangor, Maine. Tobin has pleaded innocent and will stand trial. He was New England chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign last year.

http://www.wcsh6.com/home/article.asp?id=20829

Taking A Bath

The first 100 days of Term 2: The Bushening aren't even over, and W is taking a serious bath...

On Social Security, this new poll from the AP-

"Do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling Social Security?"

3/7-9/05
Approve 37%
Disapprove 56%
MixedFeelings 4%
Unsure 3%

On Iraq, from the same poll -

"When it comes to handling the situation in Iraq, do you approve or disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling that issue?"


Approve 45%
Disapprove 53%
MixedFeelings 2%
Unsure -

Job Ratings, from the same poll:
"Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?" If "mixed feelings" or not sure: "If you had to choose, do you lean more toward approve or disapprove?"

Approve 48%
Disapprove 50%
Mixed Feelings 2%
Unsure 1%

Source- www.pollingreport.com

Sunday, March 13, 2005

I love this headline

Funny for them to admit it's shite before even inking the deal...

Kurd Leaders Say They're Near Shiite Deal

World - AP
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kurdish leaders said Sunday that they were nearing completion on a deal with the dominant Shiite-led alliance on forming a coalition government at this week's National Assembly, while two American security contractors were killed and a third wounded by a roadside bomb south of the Iraqi capital.

Air America is coming to Texas.

Franken and company are coming to Texas, and soon.

They already have a station in Corpus Christi, and are picking up KOKE in Austin (who came up with those call letters anyway? Was it originally a disco station?) and KXEB in Dallas.

I'm sure they'll have no problem picking up devoted listeners in 'loony-lefty' Austin, and in Dallas I suspect they'll get as many 'outraged' conservatives listening as there are disgruntked Democrats eager to hear friendly voices on the airwaves.

Geez, what's next, fairness and balance in the media?

Not too early

to choose a candidate for Governor of Texas in 2006.

For the independently-minded individual, there is only one option.

The inimitable author of 'They don't make Jews like Jesus anymore', and countless mystery novels,

Kinky Friedman.

The official progressionsession choice for Texas Governor in 2006.

The man will make Willie Nelson a special envoy for energy development.

http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=2897262&nav=0s3dVwXe

http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/kinkyviews.htm

Friday, March 11, 2005


Let's Get Kinky! Posted by Hello

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Not so good news

US withdraws from international death-penalty agreement

In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21981-2005Mar9.html

Italy seriously pissed off at US
Some Italian politicians believe shooting was deliberate retaliation for Italian bargaining for release of hostages

[World News]:
WASHINGTON, March 9 :
Italian parliamentarians listened fascinated as Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini described Wednesday a clandestine operation that, but for its tragic ending, would never have been revealed.This was the Italian government's official reconstruction of the friendly fire incident in Baghdad that left an Italian intelligence officer dead and a just-released hostage injured.Fini's report went beyond the nation's emotional tribute to Nicola Calipari, the military intelligence operative who had died shielding journalist Giuliana Sgrena with his body, to point out contradictions between the Italian version and what the U.S. command in Baghdad said had happened.At the same time Fini was emphatic in discounting the left wing journalist's subsequent claim that she had been the American soldiers' real target.

http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=83255

Good news (or what passes for it these days)

Senate committee wrecks Bush's air pollution plans
(From the New York Times)

Efforts to pass a bill to control power-plant emissions crumbled in the Senate on Wednesday amid charges of partisan intransigence. The day's developments sidelined - and possibly doomed - action this year on the legislative centerpiece of President Bush's environmental policy.
Advertisement

As a result of a 9-to-9 vote by the Environment and Public Works Committee, the bill, which deals with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury, will not advance to the full Senate. Committee leaders have been trying for more than a month to break the deadlock on the measure, known as the Clear Skies Act of 2005, which generally reflected a split along party lines.

US Comptroller says Social Security NOT in crisis
(from Seattle Post - Intelligencer)
The comptroller general of the United States told Congress yesterday that Social Security faces no "immediate crisis" and warned that President Bush's proposal for individual retirement accounts could "exacerbate" the system's future financial problems.
David Walker, who heads the non-partisan Government Accountability Office of Congress, spoke at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that exposed sharp differences between Democrats and Republicans over how to overhaul Social Security before millions of retiring baby boomers strain the system's financial health.

Senate axes more than a fourth of Bush's tax cuts
(from New York Times)
President Bush's plan to extend his tax cuts over the next five years ran into resistance in the Senate on Wednesday as Republican leaders offered a budget for 2006 that would undo more than a fourth of the cuts that Mr. Bush has requested.
Uneasy about the potential impact on the ballooning federal deficit, the Senate Republicans called for $70.2 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, as opposed to the estimated $100 billion the White House is seeking. It does not specify which cuts will be extended or which taxes might be restored, but Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who is chairman of the Budget Committee, said his intent was to extend reductions on capital gains and dividend taxes, which are set to expire in 2008.

Donald Rumsfeld News Brief, from Gizoogle.com

Donald Rumsfeld News Brief
As we know,there is knizzay knowns.
there is th'n we know we kizzy .
Fo'-fo' desert eagle to your motherfuckin'dome.
we also knizzowthere is kniznown unknowns .
Keep'n it gangsta dogg.
that be ta saywe knizzow there is some th'nwe do not know but real niggaz don't give a fuck.
but there is also unknown unknowns,the ones we dont kizzlewe dont kizzy but real niggaz don't give a fuck.

Also, a few commandments, gizoogle style.

10 Commandments
Thou shalt not kizzy.
Thou shalt not commit adultery crazy up in here.
Thou shizzay not steal.
Thou S-H-to-tha-izzalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour n' shit.

See gizoogle.com
http://www.gizoogle.com/index.php

Glasgow people know what this is about: getting neddy wit' it. Posted by Hello

More from Arianna - this will make your blood boil.

"For years, credit-card companies have been claiming that tougher laws are needed to reign in high-flying customers using bankruptcy to game the system. But the truth is that the vast majority of people who file for bankruptcy are middle-class folks who can't pay their bills because they've lost their jobs or been hit with high medical bills or gone through a divorce.

Indeed, a recent study by Harvard University found that half of last year's 1.6 million bankruptcies were the result of crushing medical bills. Put another way: Every 30 seconds, someone in this country files for bankruptcy in the wake of a serious illness. How's that for a shocking stat? Here's another: Three-quarters of the so-called medically bankrupt had health insurance. It just wasn't enough to cover the dramatic rise in health-care costs."

Sometimes, there is a sad truth to the saying, 'Only in America'.
Over and matt.

Arianna on the credit debacle

"Credit card companies have been feverishly lobbying for this legislation for nearly a decade--and it looks like the $34 million the finance and credit industries have contributed to political campaigns since 1996 is finally about to pay off. On Tuesday, the cloture vote on the bill was 69 to 31. The House passed similar legislation last year and GOP leaders are hoping to bypass the conference committee deadlocks that have derailed similar measures in the past and have the bill on President Bush's desk in short order. The president, well aware that credit card giant MBNA is one of the Republican Party's largest donors, has promised to sign the bill as soon as someone hands him a pen."

Ok for now, but then?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US in dark on Iran's WMD, says inquiry

Please tell me where this commission was before Iraq?

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Conservatives are going to love this one...

As mentioned before, the pressure on Syria to pull out of Lebanon started after public outrage after the killing of the ex-prime minister, Rafik Hariri. And the fact that a half million demonstrated in favor of Hezbollah and Syria in the streets of Beirut yesterday is a sober warning too.

Also, as I said before, hats off to Bush for supporting this people power in action (not the pro-Syria people power, obviously). But who would have known from all the hoopla that the nature of that support is backing a UN Resolution proposed by France?! Let's see - diplomatic pressure, UN, working with European allies: these all sound more like liberal tactics to me than the normal neocon strongarm strategies!

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GC08Ak02.html

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9293

"Events in Lebanon are moving in a very important direction. The Lebanese people are starting to express their aspirations for democracy ... This is something that we support very much," Rice told reporters at a London conference on the Middle East.
"We will focus very much ... on what we can help the Lebanese do. That means support for free and fair elections, that means election observers if necessary, monitoring if necessary," she added, alluding to general elections in May.
Barnier echoed Rice's demand that Syria comply with U.S.- and French-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution 1559 demanding an end to foreign interference in Lebanon.
"There cannot be any pretexts, any excuses, not to carry it out," Barnier said. "It demands the sovereignty of Lebanon, the retreat of foreign troops and (intelligence) services."
The United States and France later issued a joint statement to underscore the demand and Rice said the "political directors" of the two countries would meet to discuss ways to help Lebanon.
http://www.aina.org/news/20050301103603.htm

State-run VA hospitals better than private facilities, says New England Journal of Medicine

Yet here's a curious fact that few conservatives or liberals know. Who do you think receives higher-quality health care. Medicare patients who are free to pick their own doctors and specialists? Or aging veterans stuck in those presumably filthy VA hospitals with their antiquated equipment, uncaring administrators, and incompetent staff? An answer came in 2003, when the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared veterans health facilities on 11 measures of quality with fee-for-service Medicare. On all 11 measures, the quality of care in veterans facilities proved to be “significantly better.”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/
0501.longman.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2114554/

Quote of the Day

"Ha! Ha! No. No one in Iraq desires the establishment of permanent foreign bases on our land. The United Nations Security Council resolutions are clear: it will be up to the elected Iraqi government, when the time comes, to give those forces a specific departure date. As soon as possible."
- His Most Austere Eminence Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, leader of the Shiite party which won the January 30 elections in Iraq
Bush's plan for democracy is working? Think again.

Cheers to Bush for being on the right side of history, but supporting the actions of freedom-loving Ukrainians and Lebanese, who bravely took to the streets in defiance and outrage, is not the same as being the prime mover in a democratic juggernaut. I am glad that the elections in Iraq went as well as could have been expected, but I think the death of Arafat, the re-election of Bush itself (meaning people realize they have to work together), the poisoning of Yuschenko, the murder of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri were much more important. I thank the people of the Ukraine and Lebanon for standing up, and I'm glad that the political climate is one where it is more politically expedient for the US and Europe to support these actions than to allow them to be sacrificial lambs, which of course has also happened in the past. Hooray for people power, and hooray for good timing!


What rise in freedom?
By Robert Kuttner March 9, 2005
Boston Globe

FREEDOM IS breaking out all over, so it seems. To hear supporters of George W. Bush, it's all due to the president's courageous decision to risk his presidency on the Iraq War.

Here's the storyline: Just as Bush's neoconservative advisers planned, ousting Saddam transformed not just Iraq but the balance of power in the Middle East. It gave ordinary Arabs and Muslims a sense of democratic possibility. Once Saddam went down, the other dominoes started falling.
Just read the headlines: Syria, respecting America's new muscle, is thrown off balance. Lebanon, long Syria's puppet, is demanding liberty. Egypt's despotic president (and US client) Hosni Mubarak is suddenly promising fair elections. Saudi Arabia's local elections are more authentic than usual. On the Palestine-Israel front, there's suddenly progress. Iran is negotiating about shutting down its nukes. And in Iraq itself, the process may be a mess but something real is happening.
Wow! If this picture is true, let's nominate George W. Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The only trouble is, the picture isn't true.
For starters, each of these events has its own dynamics. The new Israel-Palestine reality reflects the death of Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon's decision to seize the moment, defy his party, and do a ''Nixon to China" by dismantling some Israeli settlements in Arab lands. This shift has nothing to do with Bush or Iraq. Indeed, the Bush administration has been less active in promoting a Palestine settlement than any in memory. (Watch out, when Fidel Castro finally dies and democracy comes to Cuba, Bush will take credit for that, too.)
Saudi Arabia remains a dictatorship and an intimate ally of the Bush administration. The prospect of genuine democracy breaking out there soon is laughable. Egypt, a place where the CIA sends highly sensitive prisoners to be tortured, is a similar story. If Iran is negotiating about its nuclear ambitions, it is thanks to European diplomacy and over US objections.
Lebanon's instability dates to the 1920s, when the French split it off from Syria as a Christian enclave. The French formula gave the Lebanese Christian Maronites power over what soon became a larger Muslim majority. The consequences: on-and-off civil war and Syrian protectorate of Muslims. Lebanon is reminiscent of other colonial legacies in places like Rwanda, Vietnam, India, and Iraq, where Western powers played brutal ethnic games of divide and rule. The United States has tried to intervene in Lebanon before and each time got its fingers burned.
What the whole Mideast region has in common is a sense of bottled-up popular grievances, many of them directed against the United States for propping up dictators that served American military and corporate interests (including, once, Saddam Hussein).
If genuine democracy breaks out, Bush might not like it. Al-Jazeera, the Arab world's mirror image of Fox News, is the closest thing to free Arab language media -- and the Bush administration keeps trying to strangle it. By the same token, the eventual government that emerges in Baghdad is not likely to be both genuinely democratic and pro-American.
But Bush is right that people everywhere want to be free. However, the fitful expansion of democracy has been more the fruit of local struggle and complex diplomacy than American military intervention. That's true of South Africa, where Bush's pals viewed Nelson Mandela as an untrustworthy Marxist; it's true of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, and the rest of the former Soviet empire.
Often, astute diplomacy and civil society initiatives work where invasions can't. The little-remembered Helsinki Process of the 1970s traded a US guarantee of no Western-sponsored ''regime change" in the Soviet bloc for Moscow's loosening of the screws. Civil society blossomed. American conservatives hated the deal. But before the Russians knew it, the Berlin Wall came down.
Bush is also right that democracy is contagious. As Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker after the Iraqis managed to hold an election, ''One can marvel at the power of the democratic idea. . . . Perhaps it can even survive the fervent embrace of George W. Bush."
So, rather than rejecting his odd embrace of universal freedom, let's hold Bush to his words. Let's have no double standards for despotic allies of convenience. Let's not manipulate other people's democracies behind the scenes. And if democracy is good enough for Iraqis, let's defend what Bush has not yet wrecked of democracy at home.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

Hooray! The wicked witch is dead!

Humiliated Blair may abandon terror Bill
By George Jones, Political Editor(Filed: 09/03/2005)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/09/nterr09.xml&sSheet=/
news/2005/03/09/ixnewstop.html

(That's right, Telegraph. You heard me.)

Tony Blair faces the humiliation today of bowing to Tory and Liberal Democrat demands to water down the Government's anti-terror proposals or risk losing the entire Prevention of Terrorism Bill only weeks before an expected general election.

The Government suffered another heavy defeat in the House of Lords last night when peers voted overwhelmingly in favour of a "sunset clause" limiting the life of proposed powers to impose control orders on terrorist suspects.

YES THAT'S RIGHT SPORTS FANS, EVEN THE EVIL CONSERVATIVES REALISE
THIS BILL IS DANGEROUS. THEIR FIRST COMPLAINT RESULTED IN THE NAME OF THE BILL BEING CHANGED FROM THE 'ESTABLISHMENT OF A TOTALITARIAN REGIME ACT, 2005.'

Government forced into climbdown over terror bill
JAMES KIRKUP POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
Key points• More Terror Bill troubles for Tony• House of Lords put up resistance to plan • Government may be forced to give ground

Key quote"The Prime Minister should face reality and appreciate there are serious concerns across the parties about this bill which threatens our civil liberties." - David Davis, Tory shadow home secretary

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Krugman on Bankruptcy Bill

The Debt-Peonage Society
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Today the Senate is expected to vote to limit debate on a bill that toughens the existing bankruptcy law, probably ensuring the bill's passage. A solid bloc of Republican senators, assisted by some Democrats, has already voted down a series of amendments that would either have closed loopholes for the rich or provided protection for some poor and middle-class families.
The bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the industry's political muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable. But the bill also fits into the broader context of what Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity.
The bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write off their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors would find themselves on an endless treadmill of payments.
The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from debts. The facts say otherwise.
A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.
To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it's concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.
One increasingly popular loophole is the creation of an "asset protection trust," which is worth doing only for the wealthy. Senator Charles Schumer introduced an amendment that would have limited the exemption on such trusts, but apparently it's O.K. to game the system if you're rich: 54 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against the Schumer amendment.
Other amendments were aimed at protecting families and individuals who have clearly been forced into bankruptcy by events, or who would face extreme hardship in repaying debts. Ted Kennedy introduced an exemption for cases of medical bankruptcy. Russ Feingold introduced an amendment protecting the homes of the elderly. Dick Durbin asked for protection for armed services members and veterans. All were rejected.
None of this should come as a surprise: it's all part of the pattern.
As Mr. Hacker and others have documented, over the past three decades the lives of ordinary Americans have become steadily less secure, and their chances of plunging from the middle class into acute poverty ever larger. Job stability has declined; spells of unemployment, when they happen, last longer; fewer workers receive health insurance from their employers; fewer workers have guaranteed pensions.
Some of these changes are the result of a changing economy. But the underlying economic trends have been reinforced by an ideologically driven effort to strip away the protections the government used to provide. For example, long-term unemployment has become much more common, but unemployment benefits expire sooner. Health insurance coverage is declining, but new initiatives like health savings accounts (introduced in the 2003 Medicare bill), rather than discouraging that trend, further undermine the incentives of employers to provide coverage.
Above all, of course, at a time when ever-fewer workers can count on pensions from their employers, the current administration wants to phase out Social Security.
The bankruptcy bill fits right into this picture. When everything else goes wrong, Americans can still get a measure of relief by filing for bankruptcy - and rising insecurity means that they are forced to do this more often than in the past. But Congress is now poised to make bankruptcy law harsher, too.
Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to turn into a "sharecroppers' society" than an "ownership society." But I think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system, prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won't get us back to those bad old days all by itself, but it's a significant step in that direction.
And any senator who votes for the bill should be ashamed.

Morally Bankrupt

Published on Monday, March 7, 2005 by the Madison Capital Times / WI
Bankruptcy Bill is Congress' Shame
by Dave Zweifel

The Republican-dominated Congress is on the verge of changing the nation's bankruptcy laws to make it easier for the hugely profitable credit card companies to get their money back and more at the expense of the nation's poor.
The big banking interests have been trying - and failing - for the past four congressional sessions to make it more difficult for financially beleaguered Americans to file for bankruptcy, tipping the balance in favor of the nation's big financial interests.
This time, though, the legislation is all but assured of passage in both houses, thanks to gains made by Republicans in the 2004 elections. Wisconsin is playing a role in the debate. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who represents silk-stocking suburban Milwaukee and has long been a toady of special business interests, not surprisingly is leading the charge in the House.
The "reform" is ostensibly needed to counter those who are abusing the current system by running up large debts and then wiping them out, leaving banks and credit card companies high and dry.
But the extent of those abuses is open to debate. It is known, however, that one of the leading causes of bankruptcy, especially among Americans over 50, has long been devastating medical bills not covered by insurance.
This Republican-dominated Congress would rather pass legislation favoring the wealthy and powerful than tackle the nation's shameful health care system that has left 42 million Americans without any medical coverage.
The "reform" package would require bankruptcy filers to pass a means test. If their incomes are above a certain poverty-line linked level, they wouldn't be able to file under Chapter 7, where all but a few debts are wiped out. Rather, they would be required to file under Chapter 13, which requires specific payments to creditors over a set number of years.
As usual, the bankruptcy law rewrite is aimed only at the little guy. There is absolutely no attempt to rein in the credit card companies that shower every American household with dozens of enticing credit card offers every month, whether they are poor credit risks or college students with no income to repay bills.
"What the credit card industry has been doing the last 10 years is akin to sending free samples of alcohol to alcoholics," says Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America.
All segments of society have been affected. Veterans, for example, are being counseled by American Legion Magazine this month about the "debt trap" from too much credit card use.
"Paying the minimum payment every time on a $5,000 credit card debt at 21 percent interest will require 1,040 payments to clear the debt," the article points out. "Beyond the $5,000 principal balance, $32,198.66 in interest will be paid."
Now that's the kind of abuse that our lawmakers ought to be concerned about.
Instead, representatives like James Sensenbrenner work overtime to punish some poor bloke down on his or her luck so that the moneyed interests, the ones who grease their palms, can collect even more.
Copyright 2005 The Capital Times

Is this man a human being? Is that his real hair? What is up with that moustache? Look deep into his eyes... and tell me what you see...  Posted by Hello

Monday, March 07, 2005

Happy Birthday To Me

A holiday from politics, in honour of my thirty years on this planet.

And now, the lyrics to Happy Birthday To Me by the Vandals:

It's my birthday and I'll do what I want toFuck you it's my birthday.A special holiday only for me, so do what I say,it's my party, I'll make you cry if I want to...or leave.Fuck you, it's not your birthday, so do what I say.For 24 hours your wishing me well364 days I'm in hell, Oh well.Happy Birthday to me.alone on my Birthday,I'm going to Denny's 10 times todayNo Tip! it's my birthday, so do what I sayHow could you forget my birthday?That's really immatureFuck you for forgetting my birthdayyou didn't do what I say24 hours no wishing wellnow 365 days I'm in Hell, Oh well.Happy Birthday to me.Happy Birthday to me, Spank Me!Oh well, Happy Birthday to me,I can't believe you forgot my birthdayit's my birthday and you're wrecking itnow it's just like any other dayyou didn't do what I sayHow could you forget my birthday?That's really immature...

And now, this week's Simpsons schedule in Britain:
06-Mar 18:00 CABF15 I'm Goin' To Praiseland07-Mar 18:00 1F19 The Boy Who Knew Too Much08-Mar 18:00 1F21 Lady Bouvier's Lover09-Mar 18:00 1F20 Secrets Of A Successful Marriage10-Mar 18:00 7F03 Bart Gets An F11-Mar 18:00 7F02 Simpson and Delilah11-Mar 21:30 AABF19 E-I-E-I-D'oh!06-Mar 18:00 CABF16 Children Of A Lesser Clod07-Mar 18:00 7F04 Treehouse Of Horror08-Mar 18:00 7F01 Two Cars In Every Garage and Three Eyes On Every Fish09-Mar 18:00 7F05 Dancin' Homer10-Mar 18:00 7F08 Dead Putting Society11-Mar 18:00 7F07 Bart vs. Thanksgiving11-Mar 21:00 BABF02 Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder11-Mar 21:30 BABF03 Eight Misbehavin'06-Mar 18:00 CABF17 Simpsons Tall Tales07-Mar 18:00 7F06 Bart the Daredevil08-Mar 18:00 7F09 Itchy and Scratchy and Marge09-Mar 18:00 7F10 Bart Gets Hit By A Car10-Mar 18:00 7F11 One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Bluefish11-Mar 18:00 7F12 The Way We Was11-Mar 21:00 NYL Not Yet Listed11-Mar 21:30 NYL Not Yet Listed

And now,
Matt

Friday, March 04, 2005

Bush Budget Cuts - effect on Texas

Of course, if we had just left taxes as they were under Clinton, none of this would be happening...

Bad for security -

- The Bush budget cuts the COPS program, which has put 6,124 officers on Texas streets, by 96 percent.

Bad for health care -

- The Bush budget cuts $45 billion from Medicaid, enough to provide health care to 1.8 million children. Texas's share of these cuts is $2.7 billion.

Bad for education -

- Bush underfunds his own No Child Left Behind Act by $13.1 billion in his budget. In Texas, that means a shortfall of $1.1 billion, leaving behind 272,271 Texas children.

Bad for the environment -

- Bush cuts Texas clean water programs by $17.7 million.

Bad for the poor -

- Bush's 2006 budget also cuts the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program -- which helps low-income families afford heating fuel in the winter -- by $234.4 million, including $5.2 million cut for Texas residents.

Bad for veterans -

- The Bush budget would require many veterans to pay a new $250 annual "user fee" to use the Veterans Administration health care system, and would double the prescription drug co-payment for the 1,754,809 Texas veterans.

Source: http://www.democrats.org/bushbudget/index.html

And, to think, all of this so the top 1% of American society can own an even bigger piece of the pie.

Does thinking veterans should have decent heath care make me a communist? I guess so. I mean those amputees should just pull themselves up by their bootstrap!

See ya later
Matthew

Letter from former foreign minister of Canada

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/westview/story/2610442p-3026695c.html

Missile Counter-Attack Axworthy fires back at U.S. -- and Canadian -- critics of our BMD decision in An Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005
By LLOYD AXWORTHY

Dear Condi, I'm glad you've decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It's a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.

Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government's role should be when there isn't a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such a missile defence can be made openly.

You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.

Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.

Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire.

If you want to have us consider your proposals and positions, present them in a proper way, through serious discussion across the table in our cabinet room, as your previous president did when he visited Ottawa. And don't embarrass our prime minister by lobbing a verbal missile at him while he sits on a public stage, with no chance to respond.

Now, I understand that there may have been some miscalculations in Washington based on faulty advice from your resident governor of the "northern territories," Ambassador Cellucci. But you should know by now that he hasn't really won the hearts and minds of most Canadians through his attempts to browbeat and command our allegiance to U.S. policies.

Sadly, Mr. Cellucci has been far too closeted with exclusive groups of 'experts' from Calgary think-tanks and neo-con lobbyists at cross-border conferences to remotely grasp a cross-section of Canadian attitudes (nor American ones, for that matter).

I invite you to expand the narrow perspective that seems to inform your opinions of Canada by ranging far wider in your reach of contacts and discussions. You would find that what is rising in Canada is not so much anti-Americanism, as claimed by your and our right-wing commentators, but fundamental disagreements with certain policies of your government. You would see that rather than just reacting to events by drawing on old conventional wisdoms, many Canadians are trying to think our way through to some ideas that can be helpful in building a more secure world.

These Canadians believe that security can be achieved through well-modulated efforts to protect the rights of people, not just nation-states.

To encourage and advance international co-operation on managing the risk of climate change, they believe that we need agreements like Kyoto.

To protect people against international crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, they support new institutions like the International Criminal Court -- which, by the way, you might strongly consider using to hold accountable those committing atrocities today in Darfur, Sudan.

And these Canadians believe that the United Nations should indeed be reformed -- beginning with an agreement to get rid of the veto held by the major powers over humanitarian interventions to stop violence and predatory practices.

On this score, you might want to explore the concept of the 'Responsibility to Protect' while you're in Ottawa. It's a Canadian idea born out of the recent experience of Kosovo and informed by the many horrific examples of inhumanity over the last half-century. Many Canadians feel it has a lot more relevance to providing real human security in the world than missile defence ever will. This is not just some quirky notion concocted in our long winter nights, by the way. It seems to have appeal for many in your own country, if not the editorialists at the Wall Street Journal or Rush Limbaugh. As I discovered recently while giving a series of lectures in southern California, there is keen interest in how the U.S. can offer real leadership in managing global challenges of disease, natural calamities and conflict, other than by military means.

There is also a very strong awareness on both sides of the border of how vital Canada is to the U.S. as a partner in North America. We supply copious amounts of oil and natural gas to your country, our respective trade is the world's largest in volume, and we are increasingly bound together by common concerns over depletion of resources, especially very scarce fresh water.

Why not discuss these issues with Canadians who understand them, and seek out ways to better cooperate in areas where we agree -- and agree to respect each other's views when we disagree.

Above all, ignore the Cassandras who deride the state of our relations because of one missile-defence decision. Accept that, as a friend on your border, we will offer a different, independent point of view. And that there are times when truth must speak to power.

In friendship, Lloyd Axworthy

(Lloyd Axworthy is president of the University of Winnipeg and a former Canadian foreign minister)