busy and pissy

Drove four and a half hours with my back teeth floating for the last hour to see Rickie Lee Jones tonight.

It's a two hour drive.

Fucking traffic.

I spent all weekend doing everybody's favorite thing, Reinstalling the OS. Have a few pictures left.

Fucking computers.

I will blogroll you as soon as I get a chance, please be patient, blogrolling was freaking out, and then my computer took a big fat shit.

Update 8:48 AM 2/12/2008: Rickie Lee Jones was great :)

I think she hit all of these at least once.

Egypt threatens to break the legs of Gaza infiltrators

Egypt is the second largest recipient of United States military aid after Israel.

Palestinian refugees in Egypt
By 1995 there were some 85,000 Palestinians in the Chicago metropolitan area, about half born outside the United States. Palestinians formed about 60 percent of the Arab population of the Chicago metropolitan area.

Dreams Stifled, Egypt’s Young Turn to Islamic Fervor

Submarine Cables, Subsidiares and Subversion

Fas-ci-nat-ing.

I'm Loosely Based

Hat tip The Apostate

You're Loosely Based!

by Storey Clayton

While most people haven't heard of you, you're a really good and
interesting person. Rather clever and witty, you crack a lot of jokes about the world
around you. You do have a serious side, however, where your interest covers the homeless
and the inequalities of society. You're good at bringing people together, but they keep
asking you what your name means.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Cynthia McKinney for President?

She's looking for the nomination for the Green Party.

She explains to Amy Goodman why she left the Democratic Party here.

Wow.

Democracy Now shows up the complete failure of the MainStream Media to report anything of importance to the American people.

Bush keeps trying to kill NPR, another source of news that doesn't try to distract us with what Britney Spears is doing today.

Local conservatives adrift after Romney pulls out

Federal Towing Contract Not Impeded by Ex-Worker's Scandal

Shit. Of COURSE NOT, it's San Diego. Business interests are never impeded by scandal because almost everybody's dirty here. From the time I could hear I heard "It ain't what you know, it's who you know." The old boy's network in this particular case just happens to have a big fat case of Pinoy Pride. I gotta admit though, that I appreciate Bob Filner, & I wish he was my congressman.

Completely unrelated, but interesting to me:


The curtain lifts for Bollywood in Pakistan
Feb 8, 2008
By Sudha Ramachandran

...But not everyone is putting out the welcome mat. Bollywood's less well-known cousin across the border, Lollywood, Pakistan's Lahore-based film industry, is apprehensive.

Lollywood, which has languished for years as Bollywood has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry with fans across continents, fears it will be wiped out completely when its Indian rival invades.

Even less welcoming will be Pakistan's jihadis and religious conservatives, who frown on Bollywood's song-dance culture...


Mmmmm, frankly, about as close to Bollywood as I can stand was a mariginally cute movie called Bollywood/Hollywood . The singing style drives me batshit crazy and I generally prefer songs sung in English since that is the language I speak, although occasionally I hear some great stuff on the Mexican stations. Not Ranchera Norteño though, I'm not fond of German polka.

Nonpartisans stymied in attempts to get Republican ballots

Yep. First of all, Agnes and Myrtle from the Courage Campaign told you so.

Secondly, I remember a conversation with a Republican woman a few years ago who told me that she would never tell her Girl Scouts that the local Democratic Party was a serious option because they were so disorganized.

Mmmmmmm. I think the same woman lost her small business because the rent kept getting raised. I wonder if she's changed her mind at all?

skippy sends us over to Why Tuesday? to find out that Decline To State voters who voted on a Dem ballot may have some double bubble trouble.

I love Carl, he gets it

Tijuana burns
Our neighbor's house is on fire--and no one seems to give a damn
By Carl Luna 02/05/2008

And the Winner is?


And, ummmm, I don't like the sound of this:

Brokered Dem convention looking more likely
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, February 6, 2008


do you?

Why the Saudis aren't lifting a finger to ease oil prices

By Steve Yetiv and Lowell Feld
Wed Feb 6, 3:00 AM ET

(Snort. That title cracks me up. When was the last time the Saudi's lifted their fingers to do anything other than reach for a credit card?)

WTF?

What the fuck is going on with blogrolling.com?

I'm tired, I've been out doing the crap I hate doing anyway (shopping, ugh!) and now I'm aggravated because I want to read the new blogs I linked to and none of my blogrolls are showing up.

If you linked to me, I'll be happy to add you to my blogroll as soon as I can see the damned thing again, their site is down right now.

Thom Hartmann caller reports voter caging in Southern California

click here to stream KTLK, LA's Progressive Talk

click here to stream election coverage from NPR

Primary Election reporting

First the fulla crap MSM

Thomas Elias: Voting machines back on track

...Disputes over the touch-screen machines and the company that made them has forced the county to revert to tried-and-true paper ballots time and again....

Umm, yeah, the fishwrap be NOT talking about these hackable optical scanners in San Diego.

Here are a couple of places you can visit to see what's really going on:

skippy's all over it today :)

BradBlog

TPM Election Central

Who did YOU vote for? (Hat tip Make them Accountable )

Population post

Anybody that reads this silly little blog knows that "Peaceful Population control and a healthy planet" are important to me. Yeah, says it right there on my blog profile.

I'm on a couple of mailing lists that I actually want to be on and one of them is Population Connection . So guess what was in my mailbox this morning?


Demonstrating, once again, his contempt for the needs of poor women and families around the world, President Bush is calling on Congress to slash funding for overseas family planning programs by $134 million (or 29 percent) from the current level of $461 million.

Sadly, U.S. contributions to international family planning programs have been woefully inadequate over the past decade. Indeed, today, our nation is contributing significantly less than it did 14 years ago. The need, though, is increasing. As you may know, there are 6.7 billion people in the world today. By 2050, that number is projected to range from below 8 billion -- if we act now to make family planning and contraceptives available to the hundreds of millions of women who lack access to them -- to nearly 12 billion.

With this growing population comes a growing demand for family planning services. In fact, there are some 200 million women in the developing world who would like to delay or prevent pregnancy but lack access to safe, effective contraceptives, and the demand for contraceptives is projected to increase by 40 percent over the next 15 years.

Family planning benefits everyone, and few investments promise so high a return. It improves the health of women and children, economic and social conditions of communities and countries, and the environment.

In addition, the president today requested that Congress increase funding for discredited and dangerous abstinence-only programs targeted at young Americans. These programs have been found to be ineffective at reducing adolescent sexual activity and preventing teen pregnancy. Numerous evaluations have also found that federally funded abstinence-only programs are riddled with misinformation.

The president's proposal is the first step in a long budget process on Capitol Hill, and you can help ensure that these draconian cuts are rejected, and that Congress works to increase the funding for these programs. Please be on the lookout in the coming days for ways you can help.

Yeah, that sucks. You know what sucks even more?

Bush Budget Would Bring Record Deficits
By ANDREW TAYLOR
WASHINGTON (AP) — The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush...

Yes Virginia

Working Class Whites ARE stupid enough to vote for The Madness of John McCain.

Yep-pers, they are the kind of fucktards that yell in your face "Freedom isn't Free!! "

Exxon Rakes in Record $10 Billion Quarterly Earnings While Cheering OPEC's Readiness to Cut Production
Raymond J. Learsy

Sooooooo, we're getting poked in the butt by a bunch of rich fucks at the gas pump and the Bush Administration has pissed all over the constitution also.

Great Firewall of China Faces Online Rebels

Not if these fucking wankers get any more involved than they already are.

Celebrating the anniversary of blogroll amnesty day

Yesterday I wandered around blogtopia (yes, skippy the bush kangaroo coined that term) looking for interesting blogs that I had never seen before, or I thought were great places to visit.

First, a little local gem:

Heather Annastasia's Politics and Religion Blog

And some linky love for another local:

R World

Arredonald. Liberal. Mama. Blogger. is a nice local blog to visit. Does she have cute kids or what?

I found a really funny dude in Chicago:

johniwanski.com


And a teacher, because, well, I like teachers:

The Red Scare

Ok, I'm pooped & I'm going to bed now. Looking for blogs with a politics tag took me into right-wing idiot territory and I usually avoid that because the stupid burns.

Oh, and you link to me, I'll link to you, K? Leave a comment and link for me, please.

My PBS shows from last night

Middle Class Insecurity

Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Government Oversight part one

Government Oversight part two

If you give a crap about what happens to this country watch the video links above.

Especially amazing to me was the guy and his wife talking about how they vote, at about nine minutes into the NOW Middle Class Insecurity show.

Mr. Amazing is why I loved this article.

Election Software Lost in Transit Found -- But More Chips Go Missing

...Two cardboard shipping tubes that were supposed to contain the chips arrived empty in San Diego, with one of the tubes missing its lid...

...A Santa Barbara staffer discovered that their box contained 156 more chips than they were supposed to receive and found a sticker on them indicating they were meant for San Diego...

... Davis says this scenario is also supported by the fact that a majority of the 19 counties that were shipped chips received packages that were damaged. Additionally, some of the San Diego chips that were found in Santa Barbara were crushed, bent or otherwise destroyed -- indicating a possible conveyor belt mishap. He thinks the 18 chips that are still missing were probably thrown out or swept up by whoever cleaned up the mishap....

... San Diego County will not be using the 156 chips that were found. Instead, the secretary of state's office sent it new chips. The chips will be used in next Tuesday's primary.

Off topic, but still related to San Diego -- Donna Frye is wonderful.

This is cute (video link click here)

In California:

Here's the deal: "Decline-to-State" voters have the right to vote in the Democratic presidential primary (but NOT the Republican primary). All they have to do is ask for a "Democratic Party ballot" from their poll worker.

Tonight's Obama/Clinton debate CNN. "Gee Wally, this is really swell now that all the rabble rowsers are gone."

Wars suck

War on the Middle Class in the US:

Outsourcing is just fabulous, eh?



Is the Fed Bailing Out the Economy or the Banks?

Foreclosures hit pets, too

Jan 29, 2008 17:20 ET
San Diego's Finest Real Estate Commences Foreclosure Bus Tours
Local Real Estate Company Offers Tours of Foreclosed Properties Throughout San Diego Starting With Solana Beach, Del Mar and Carmel Valley


How's that War on Drugs going?

Getting worse, eh?


Mmmm, this oughtta make "the surge is working McCain" look good.

But, er, how much good has he done from this committee if veterans who could have suffered traumatic brain injury may be getting unnecessary or inadequate health care and
Army suicides are up? More veterans are homeless?
Go check out his voting record. Here are a couple of his votes on veteran's issues.

Are the resource wars ramping up?



Tomgram: Michael Klare, Barreling into Recession
posted January 31, 2008 3:35 pm

A joke my friend sent me

Garfield on the oil crisis :

A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.

Well, there's a very simple answer.

Nobody bothered to check the oil.

We just didn't know we were getting low.

The reason for that is purely geographical.

Our OIL is located in

ALASKA

California

Coastal Florida

Coastal Louisiana

Kansas

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania and

Texas....

Our DIPSTICKS are located in Washington, DC !!!

Any Questions ???

Lobbyist-Free Romney?

Home » Spin of the Day » Jan 26, 2008

...Although U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney "has cast himself as a Washington outsider and blasted his opponents' ties to lobbyists," in fact he "has more than a dozen federally registered lobbyists raising money for him...

Oh and then there's this:

... Meanwhile, Blackwater is deep in the camp of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Cofer Black is Romney's senior adviser on counterterrorism...


Fuck.

Any of the candidates that were interesting to me have been kicked to the curb by the MSM, while it focuses on candidates that it can do business with.

Shit.

No wonder people don't bother to vote.

Update: 10:00 PM 1/30/2008

What an amusing little title:

The Supreme Court Forgets the Little People
The conservative-dominated court is totally out of touch with the rest of the country.

(Snort) Gee ya think?

McCain, Clinton, Florida

Oh and here's another surprise, go laugh

These guys are sooooo funny!

They played Beruit, & they're scheduled to play DC. I'm betting that the Beruit audience had a better sense of humor.

Nothing to do with the comedians, but a great new website called Full Frontal Scrutiny

Git your mind out of the gutter, it's about the propaganda that Americans are bombarded with on a daily basis.

And Chalmers Johnson reviews a book that punctures a hole in the myth of free trade.

I know I am, but what are you?

The title of this article just cracked me up:

Romney, McCain Call Each Other 'Liberal'
By GLEN JOHNSON Associated Press Writer


You think any of the knuckle dragging, voting against their own best interest, fReeptards have any idea what the word liberal means?

The basics of oil

No, it's not nap time, I just don't want to read any more today, let's watch a documentary, K?

Update, or not, here's the trailer

Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe

From The Sunday Times
January 27, 2008

AN investigation into the illicit sale of American nuclear secrets was compromised by a senior official in the State Department, a former FBI employee has claimed.

The official is said to have tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus CIA company used to investigate the sale of nuclear secrets.

The firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was a front for Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent. Her public outing two years later in 2003 by White House officials became a cause célèbre.

The claims that a State Department official blew the investigation into a nuclear smuggling ring have been made by Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language translator in the FBI’s Washington field office.

Edmonds had been employed to translate hundreds of hours of intercepted recordings made during a six-year FBI inquiry into the nuclear smuggling ring.

Related Links
* FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft January 20, 2008


* For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets January 6, 2008

From

Bradblog


And more fallout from the Bush Administration:

Plan to Allow Logging in Alaskan Forest
Plan would open Tongass forest to logging

3 million acres of the Alaska wilderness would be made available under the new U.S. Forest Service management outline.

By Tami Abdollah,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 26, 2008

Big oil's threat to whales and people

...our thousand spills--over one a day--recorded by the oil industry in its land operations in the last decade, and keeping in mind that offshore hazards are far greater, the inevitable accidents seem certain to accumulate into an ongoing and permanent calamity. A black effluvia of crude petroleum and drilling mud and chemical pollutants would spread inshore, suffocating plankton and invertebrates and bottom-dwelling fish and poisoning great stretches of Arctic coast with a viscous excrescence. The same toxic mixture will blacken the drifting ice, fouling the pristine habitat of Arctic birds, the Pacific walrus, four species of seals, and the beleaguered polar bear, while contaminating the migratory corridors of the white beluga and endangered bowhead whales—all this defilement made much worse by the grim fact that no technology has ever been developed for cleaning up spilled oil in icy waters. Even in spills in temperate waters, such as the Exxon Valdez disaster, only an average of less than 15 percent is ever removed.

An immediate threat to Inupiat culture is the disruption of animal habitats and whale migrations caused by seismic testing, in which arrays of powerful airguns shoot sound waves through the sea floor in search of deep rock formations that might hold gas or oil. "The underwater noise produced by seismic airguns...is among the most intense sounds ever generated by humankind.... The potential harm is enormous," according to Dr. Christopher W. Clark, a marine biologist and undersea acoustics specialist at Cornell.
(click on pic for more information)
Very short bursts of very high energy noise are exploded within the ocean and injected into the earth. Those explosions are repeated over and over again, twenty-four hours a day, for days on end...going off every 9–12 seconds. They represent the most severe acoustic insult to the marine environment I can imagine short of naval warfare.[3]

Seismic testing has been shown to cause significant mortality in fish eggs and larvae, and while permanent harm to adult animals has not been researched , it can scarcely be doubted that physical and neurological damage will result. Yet seismic prospecting (minimally monitored for the bowhead whale, an officially recognized endangered species) is still permitted before leases for ocean drilling are issued, and the leases stipulate no protection of wild creatures against loss of habitat or other harm that might impair their chances of survival.

Even without disruptions such as seismic testing, the rapid withdrawal of the ice is truly ominous for Arctic wildlife, since the melting edges of the ice pack are where life proliferates in the twenty-four-hour light of spring and summer. The profusion of phytoplankton and sea algae attracts fish and birds and also the bowhead, which consumes plankton; the beluga feeds along the ice edge on the small Arctic cod. Of the four seal species, the bearded and ringed seals are entirely ice-dependent, and the preferred habitat of the Pacific walrus, too, is drifting ice, which carries it over the rich mollusk beds from which it feeds. Warming has already set in motion an ecological chain reaction as the ice-edge cod, which feed the ringed seals, which feed the polar bears, follow the retreating sea ice farther and farther from the coast...

Finished reading

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein basically documents what I'll call Milton Friedman's Fabulous Feudalism program. Good times for the disgustingly selfish rich, and getting worse for the rest of us.

Frankly, the clarity regarding Israeli economic policy makes the last couple of days on the Gaza/Egypt border much easier to understand.

Here's an article by Barbara Ehrenreich that references Naomi's book.

Gonna make my kid read it when she finishes her econ class, so she gets more than dry, dull, boring theory. She said the college education she's suffering through is sucking all of her creativity out of her ears. I think she's right, just browsing the index in her econ text made me sleepy.

Tonight's NOW show looks pretty darn interesting to me, (hey, I like documentaries, OK?) and Bill Moyers has at least one story that I won't miss called Buying the Bench?

Bills bills bills, ugh

Remember the kidney stone? You know, the one that he tried to hand the nurses to take to the lab (but they couldn't be bothered with) so we could change his diet according to what type of stone it was?

The bills from the hospital are coming in.

I figure the insurance is scheduled to pay approximately 76 dollars an hour for the time in hospital. The hospital has billed 211 dollars per hour for same said time. That includes the 6 hours he sat in the ER waiting area in excruciating pain (after 36 hours of pain already) next to the 400 lb. man with exuberant flatulence.