Bush on Drugs

Traffic is one of my favorite movies. My favorite line comes from Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) trying to work with US DEA and actually get something worthwhile out of it. He's in the pool with these guys and he asks them "You like beisbol?"

Remember the last scene in the movie? Kids playing on a new and well lit baseball field in TJ (Tijuana).

Smart.

Now back to reality. The "war on drugs" now has not only the elite from TJ fleeing to live in the United States, but some of the middle class have fled TJ and now live here in San Diego. It's too dangerous to live in TJ now.

What will it take to end Mexican drug trafficking? President Bush thinks $1.4 billion.

...The plan envisions $1.4 billion in military equipment and training for Mexico's drug interdiction forces over three years, including eight Bell 412 helicopters, two CASA CN-245-300 surveillance planes, eighty-seven ion scanners used for drug detection, night vision gear, and sophisticated electronic inspection equipment. It would also fund software to facilitate cross-border intelligence sharing, forensics systems for identifying smuggled firearms, immigration document verification systems, and human rights and anti-corruption training for Mexican police...

...a $73 million funding decline in next year's proposed federal budget for drug treatment programs...

Ehhhh, not so smart. I can think of more effective ways to spend 1.4 billion, you?

Norm Stamper started out as a beat cop in San Diego. I somehow missed the aritcle he wrote entitled How Legalizing Drugs Will End the Violence & it's a good one.

CASHING IN ON AMERICA’S VETERANS (click here)

Thursday, February 14, 2008
Posted by Jim Hightower

Roger Chapin calls himself a “non-profit entrepreneur.” You might call him a money-grubbing huckster… or worse.

This San Diego business operator with big-name Republican connections has found a way to profit handsomely from the natural impulse of the American people to “support our troops.”


Two words: Fucking bastard.

Northern Ill. University: Was the Killer Crazy, or the Campus Hopeless?

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted February 16, 2008.

Bracket this massacre as the work of a lunatic on drugs, and you miss the chance to consider the horrors of life in middle America.

...Schoolyard shootings are too shocking and subversive to forget. They remind us that we were just as miserable as kids as we are as adult workers. In fact, the similarities between the two, the continuity of misery and entrapment from school to office, become depressingly clear when you study the two settings in the context of these murders...

I laughed when I read that because today I was looking for a hard copy of the Constitution in one of the texbooks I picked up at the dollar-a-grocery-bag library sale and read part of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The only reason I read these articles is because the author seemed to approach the subject like I do. What really happened to these kids to push them over the edge?

Yeah, & on the other hand the media focuses intensely on 7 dead in a school shooting, but yeesh, something like 40-thousand people die in car wrecks and almost that many die of the flu every year. That's what I told the kid when she was scared to go to school because of all the sensational newz reportz anyway.

When kissing cousins aren't so cute

SEX IN DEPTH
When kissing cousins aren't so cute
By William Sparrow
South Asia
Feb 16, 2008

...British Pakistanis' inter-family marriages are a concern of public health, due to disproportional representations of birth defects in their population. For British society it puts an added strain on the National Health Service, but short of introducing a law to forbid these marriages, there seems little can be done. The continued attempts to educate people about this seem to have been fruitless thus far...


Jeeezusss Christ man, there are six point seven billion fucking people on the planet and these dipshits are inbreeding?

bwaaa haaa haaaa hahahaha ha ha ha ha

Last night I watched this photo essay re: Iraqi refugees

and I woke up with this song stuck in my head.

Sweden debates Iraq refugee policy
Sweden has taken in far more Iraqi refugees than the U.S. has.

...But Sweden's attitude could be shifting — and the country's asylum policy along with it....
...New immigrants are crowding Swedish classrooms and placing a greater burden on Sweden's cradle-to-grave welfare benefits...

Now I have to do homework. I have to take a position.

Iraq War -- Right or Wrong?

Right
Wrong
Right
Wrong
Right
Wrong
Right
Wrong
Right
Wrong
Right
Right/Wrong
Afghanistan is another story altogether.


Update 6:34 PM 2/16/2008

My head is killing me. Guess which position I took?

Reading tomorrow

and over the President's Day holiday.

Yeesh, looks like a huge undertaking.

How could I not? I love reading Jared Diamond's books.



And now it's off to watch NOW and Bill Moyers' Journal.

Peace out.

Tomgram: Jonathan Schwarz, Bill Kristol's Obscure Masterpiece

posted February 14, 2008 2:58 pm

wherein Jonathon basically says William Kristol is an idiot and then proceeds to back that opinion up.

Surprised?

I'm not.

Here's the exchange when they turn to what will happen to Iraq's Kurds:
"ELLSBERG: The Kurds have every reason to believe they will be betrayed again by the United States, as so often in the past. The spectacle of our inviting Turks into this war... could not have been reassuring to the Kurds...
"KRISTOL: I'm against betraying the Kurds. Surely your point isn't that because we betrayed them in the past we should betray them this time?
"ELLSBERG: Not that we should, just that we will.
"KRISTOL: We will not. We will not."




In 1629, King Charles I granted a charter to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which included the authority to use a seal. It featured an Indian holding an arrow pointed down in a gesture of peace, with the words "Come over and help us," emphasizing the missionary and commercial intentions of the original colonists. This seal was used until 1686, shortly after the charter was annulled, and again from 1689-1692.

Wow, gimmee nine minutes worth of Olbermann any day,but this just made me smack my lips with satisfaction.

Hey, maybe this Valentines' Day wasn't so bad after all :)

Valentines Day 2008

This PDF file is the homework I blew off while I was trying to get my computer up and running again, & then I went to LA to be entertained and see my friend. It's perfect for me since I have vast holes in my political knowledge base and I learn more when I can connect history to current events.

Today is Valentines Day.

Hillary Loves New York:

Candidates' Earmarks Worth Millions
Of Front-Runners, McCain Abstained
By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; Page A01

Superdelegates 101 (Superdelegates loves them some Hillary)

When Evil Empires Collide: Murdoch Now Talking to Yahoo, Mao’s Valentine Gift

China threat. What threat?
Greater China
Feb 12, 2008
By Henry Rosemont


Democracy Now wants you to know something about chocolate and diamonds.

You know, those things that are supposed to signify love on Valentines Day?

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?