My watering can inhabitant

This morning I filled up this watering can, rinsed off the patio, and then discovered that the watering can had an inhabitant. Click on the pic if you're not sure what it is, and no, I didn't get bit. (the time is incorrect on the camera).

Somehow this seems fitting for today. Leona Helmsley died today.

Remember her?

Here's a hint-- "Only the little people pay taxes."

So, a couple of neurotoxic widows died today.

Religion sucks 2

This might be the easiest weekly feature, ummm, well ok, the ONLY weekly feature here.

Christians Alarmed at Non-Hindu Ban around Indian Shrine

The state government of Andhra Pradesh in India has announced plans to impose a 110-square-kilometre ban of non-Hindu religions around a Hindu shrine.
by Maria Mackay
Posted: Saturday, August 18, 2007, 11:36 (BST)

Oil price up on hurricane fears
5:00AM Monday August 20, 2007

CIA and Vatican edit Wikipedia entries
August 18, 2007 - 5:50PM
A US hacker's homemade program to pinpoint origins of Wikipedia edits indicates that alterations to the popular online encyclopedia have come from the CIA and the Vatican.


Where Does Money Come From ?



“In Debt We Have Trusted,” For over 300 years
What is money: Where does money come from?

Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created.

"Shareholders and top executive management"

I missed this last night. I'm watching it now. NOW.

I'm also thinking about the ten most important documentaries and books that I've discovered since September 11, 2001. I need to add a TV show to that list, and I think it's going to be more than ten books and DVDs.

Follow up

Something I noticed, but haven't mentioned till now, is that I'm hearing advertisements on the radio for Border Patrol agents.

I figured this would happen, I just didn't mention it at the time.

CNN God's Warriors

Hmmmmm. I hope I can watch it online after it airs next week. I don't know why, I don't need an excuse to loathe these fuckers any more than I already do. I am curious to see if the birthrate is higher among these frightened, angry assholes.

Isn't that always one of any religious teaching? Go forth and squirt out as many brats as you possibly can for the cause. Just what the world needs, more frightened, angry assholes.

Here's an example of the type of person that just doesn't need to be raising any more kids. Watch for the terrified look on the youngest kid's face in this clip of God Warrior from one of those stupid trading spouse shows.

It's not like humans are an endangered species, right?

Voting machines

YouTube videos

Dan Rather discusses voting machine failures on CNN
from Brad.


Voting machines in jail from Black Box Voting

Sen. Barbara Boxer: Stop the GOP Electoral Power Grab in California

(Since it's hot for the third day and my brain hurts, most of today's links are YouTube videos)

Senator Boxer takes to task

Kevin Martin FCC chairman, partisan hack and Bush bootlicker

I'll admit it.

I love Barbara Boxer, and I'm glad that she's my senator.

I'm considering one of these Draft Barbara Boxer bumper stickers .

I think this country is ready for a female president, but Hillary ain't it.

However, I won't be surprised if Hillary ends up being the nominee

It's all show anyway.

They just pick two flavors of protectors of the rich.

Tonight on PBS NOW, a show that will hit close to home for me, literally.

Home Insurance 9-1-1

People who lost their homes in the Cedar fire in San Diego County still can't rebuild.

I'm irritated

It's hot. I don't have air-conditioning OR a cross-breeze. The neighborhood BOYS are running around screaming like banshees. I just want them to shut the fuck up long enough to get a 20 minute nap, little bastards.

Oh Jeez, what am I bitching about?

I don't live in Peru.

Is the USS Comfort goig to help the earthquake victims?

They need to be asked?

By whom?

And, yeah, I don't live in Baghdad either.

Or anywhere in Iraq.


Ingenious people, those Iraqis.

Bob Murray: Mine Owner, Lightning Rod, "a face people want to spit on"

NYT: August 10, 2007
Bob Murray: Mine Owner and Lightning Rod
By Patrick J. Lyons

If one more fucking moron says to me "You get what you pay for"

They better not be within smacking range.

Income Inequality

(PBS NOW video)

Media Dissector on Democracy Now

Subprime loans, debt, and the AT&T censoring of Pearl Jam live (YouTube video).

I'm listening

to Stacy Taylor this morning, and he's filling in for Randi Rhodes later today.

At Three PM here, noon in LA, Phoenix and Three PM in New York.

Not my point. Point is that a caller had been to the Burt Bacharach Summer Pops show last night and he played some very mild protest song about the Bush Administration. Burt is 79 years old and I would love to be able to personally apologize to him. You see, the caller said that Burt was booed when he played his mild protest song. He said he's never been booed for playing that song before.

Guess Burt doesn't realize how many defense contractor employees live in San Diego, does he?

update: here are the lyrics to

Who Are These People?
Lyrics by Burt Bacharach and Tonio K.

Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives
And who’ll stop the violence cause it’s out of control?
Make em stop


Who are these people that destroy everything
And sell off the future for whatever it brings
And what kind of leaders can’t admit when they’re wrong?
Make em stop


This stupid mess we’re in just keeps getting worse
So many people dying needlessly
Looks like the liars may inherit the earth
Even pretending to pray
And getting away with it


Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives
And who’ll stop the violence cause it’s out of control?
We’ve got to make them stop


Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives
and who’ll stop the violence cause it’s out of control?
Make em stop


See things really have to change
Before it’s too late


This song was worth booing to these idiots? Once again, the RepugnantThuglicans in San Diego make me ill.




Karl Rove quit today , so I'm never going to get to see this.

Bummer.

Religion sucks 1

I get hits at least once every couple of weeks wherein the search term uesd is "religion sucks." Since this blog doesn't get much traffic unless skippy sends some my way, that says something to me.

It's not hard for me to find articles that prove that point to ME, anyway.

Here's an example:

Malaysia's convert marriage ilegal

Hmmmm, Sunday might be a good day for that, and this might be a regular feature here.

Oy, here we go again

with the pathetic local newz reports:

County to push absentee ballots in wake of electronic voting ban

San Diego County officials said voters would see paper ballots in February's presidential primaries. They also said no decisions had been made to challenge Bowen's decision or to break out of the county's 2003 agreement to spend $31 million on the again-decertified Diebold machines.


Tiny bubbles that are our votes that are counted on hackable Diebold optical scanners.

No reminders in the article of who Deborah Seiler and Michael Vu were before they came to San Diego.


Note: in all fairness, Gig Conaughton of the North County Times has reported on these two, and their possible conflicts of interest before. Kudos to Gig.

And Kudos to the people who wrote letters to the editor in Sacramento:

Letters: Electronic voting, prisons, environment, etc.

Don't blame her for e-vote mess
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, August 11, 2007Story appeared in EDITORIALS section, Page B6

My question is, how much longer are do we have to put up with these electronic charades they call elections?

We the people know WTF is going on.

Gee, I wonder why the US has no more allies?

Well maybe if we didn't kill our allies with cancer from DU exposure during wars for oil company greed, then we would have more of them.

Heh.

Alrighty then.

Federal reserve does a fancy dance

NEW YORK — Wall Street closed out a difficult week with a mixed finish Friday after the Federal Reserve injected billions of dollars into the banking system to calm markets torn by worries about evaporating credit.







Oh whoops, my bad, here's the article

John Hiatt & Sonny Landreth "Circle Back"

John Prine --- Flag Decal

Yesterday I posted this:

Nope, more genius reporting in the San Diego newz wurld:

Today Media Matters confirms my diagnosis nationwide.

Numerous outlets publish misleading atacks on decision to limit electronic voting.
Thu, Aug 9, 2007 5:54pm ET

Summary: While reporting on California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's decision to decertify the state's electronic voting machines in light of a study that found the systems are vulnerable to security breaches, numerous media outlets attacked the study's "unrealistic" methodology or uncritically reported criticism of the study's premise, without noting the researchers' explanation for their methods.

Alrighty then.

Who says the Grey Lady isn't good for laugh?

This is the best laugh I've had all day----
Bridge Hero Gets Offer: Paid Tuition
New York Times
August 7, 2007

Among the dozens of wrenching accounts to come out of the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, the actions of 20-year-old Jeremy Hernandez were a bright spot: Trapped in a tipping school bus with 50 children, he kicked open the back door and began helping them one by one to safety.

Within a day, news outlets across the country were repeating the story of the school bus, along with a sad footnote — that Mr. Hernandez had recently been forced to drop out of an automotive repair program because he could not afford the $15,000 tuition.

That has changed. On Saturday, Mr. Hernandez learned that Dunwoody College of Technology had offered him a full scholarship toward a degree in applied science. He has also received offers of help from dozens of strangers across the country, said Molly Schwartz, communications director for Pillsbury United Communities, which employed him as a gym coordinator for one of its summer programs.

You're right, that's not funny, that is really a great thing. So where's the humor?


...When President Bush’s staff contacted him to request a photo opportunity, “He was just, like, ‘Nope,’ ” she said.

It is impossible to prevent voting machine hacking

August 7, 2007 at 16:50:28
by Woody Smith Page 1 of 1 page(s)
OpEdNews

...When I tell you the following you can take as the genuine truth: There is NO POSSIBLE WAY UNDER THE SUN to "fix" voting machines to ensure their accuracy or their immunity from penetration from a party seeking personal gain. They are ALL, regardless of what "generation" they are, past, present or future, utterly unfixable in this context, whether or not they contain paper trails, and whether they're used merely to mark ballots or cast votes or are used to tabulate votes cast by other means (as with optical scanners). Every computer ever built is vulnerable to attack, and there is no possible way to render any computer genuinely invulnerable. ...

Nope, more genius reporting in the San Diego newz wurld:

Decision comes after ban on touch-screen machines.
By Craig Gustafson
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 7, 2007
The county is planning an aggressive push to get as many voters as possible to cast absentee ballots instead of heading to their local polling place for the Feb. 5 presidential primary.

We use optical scanners to count the absentee votes in San Diego, Diebold optical scanners.

SD Electronic Voting Systems To Be Extensively Modified
POSTED: 11:45 am PDT August 4, 2007
UPDATED: 12:05 pm PDT August 4, 2007
...A review of the Diebold equipment showed it was vulnerable to malicious attack that could change the vote tallies, among other deficiencies.

Diebold Election Systems Inc. is headquartered in Allen, Texas. One of its product lines is equipment that scans paper ballots, circumventing some of the concerns that have been expressed about touch-screen systems...

The concerns were circumvented by whom, the pathetic excuse that passes for news reporting in this county?

US navy barred from using sonar

From correspondents in Los Angeles
August 07, 2007 09:32am
THE US navy was today barred from using an ear-splitting sonar in upcoming wargames off the California coast alleged to be harmful to whales and other marine life.


alleged to be harmful to whales and other marine life. ?

Alleged?

Arrrrrgggggghhhh!


Good job, Captains of Industry.

Mmmm,m pr'haps I shouldn't be so hasty to blame Navy sonar for the demise of the whales, it could be a number of Navy pollutants, or it might be sound bombing . You know, for oil exploration.

Alrighty then.

Drugs, oil, wars

Most of Europe's heroin poppies are grown in Afghanistan.

Another record poppy crop in Afghanistan
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
Sat Aug 4, 12:27 PM ET

A while back this post of mine on Dyncorp got quite a few hits from people who might have been looking for employment, but one that I wondered about was from Columbia. I don't get a lot of hits from Columbia.
A lot of our "black tar" heroin and cocaine begins it's journey here to the US as happy little poppies and coca in Columbia. We don't like that. We spray. There's oil in Columbia also.

Hmmmmm, remember this book?

And, yeah, what happened to this dude?

Yeah,this looks like an interesting book to me:

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

I'm reading this one now:


Opium Wars by William Travis Hanes, Frank Sanello


Oh well, at least the Dyncorp guys can afford heroin. The soldiers can't, but they're buying it anyway. Umm, so what happens when the marines bring their sorry overdeployed, drug addicted asses back to San Diego? Did they clean up downtown for nothing? I wonder if this is next? If so, Southern California is going to explode, and these fuckers will be right in there, and to top it off they will have a shitload more NAFTA refugees to recruit from.

Cagle nails it

I don't know what Cagle calls it, but I would title it: Media focus on politics.

Never mind the latest US military Whoops, my bad, let's focus on the Clenis and his wife's cleavage

Oakland Post editor is victim of targeted killing possibly linked to his work

Hmmmm. That freedom of the press ranking ain't looking any better for the US when this stuff happens.

update: Police: Calif. handyman admits to shooting veteran journalist investigating Black Muslim group
By Michelle Locke
ASSOCIATED PRESS2:46 p.m. August 6, 2007

Israel's Jewish Problem in Tehran

So why hasn't Iran started by wiping its own Jews off the map?
by Jonathan Cook
August 4, 2007


...There is an interesting problem with selling the "Iran as Nazi Germany" line. If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel's Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?...
...Despite the absence of any threat to Iran's Jews, the Israeli media recently reported that the Israeli government has been trying to find new ways to entice Iranian Jews to Israel. The Ma'ariv newspaper pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was, noted the report, "a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave." According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a campaign to convince Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152 out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for economic reasons, not political ones...



So I imagine that most Iranian Jews are basically telling the Israelis and American Jews...

Frankenforests: GE Trees Threaten Ecosystem Collapse

Frankenforests: GE Trees Threaten Ecosystem Collapse

By Dara Colwell, AlterNet. Posted August 2, 2007.

Across the U.S. and the world, the timber industry is driving research behind genetically engineered forests. But environmentalists worry that it will open an ecological Pandora's Box.

In China over a million poplar trees have been planted since 2002 to combat deforestation. But the move has not been widely applauded by everyone. The poplars, which are genetically engineered, are China's first foray into the world of transgenic forestry -- or "frankenforests" -- and other countries are not far behind.



The Crash of 1929: Are We on the Verge of a Repeat?
By Scott Thill
AlterNet

Thursday 26 July 2007

...If this is beginning to sound like a game of Monopoly built on fake money, that's because it is. By injecting so many invented shares into the market using naked shorting, hedge funds have not only created an economy in which they can manipulate the stocks of companies smaller than Microsoft and Wal-Mart, but they have also created a market in which there are more shares than actual stocks. And that's about as hyperreal as an economy can get...

Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

I want this book.

Clinton Guiliani widen their leads in poll

Oh fuck the mainstream media. I don't believe this shit for one goddamned minute.

Listening to Thom Hartman's quick poll had Kucinich at the top last week.