The St Petersburg Times Also Has It Right

The St. Petersburg Times editorial writers also have it exactly right.

Hillary's pathetic ploy

A Times EditorialPublished December 12, 2005

Sen. Hillary Clinton's decision to co-sponsor a bill to make it a crime to burn the American flag amounts to political pandering of the worst kind. She was against outlawing flag-burning before she was for it.

The New York Democrat says she opposes a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning but has signed on to a bill that would ostensibly accomplish the same thing by federal statute. Her position is unprincipled. Clinton may think this is a middle-ground position with broad political appeal, but most people will see it for what it is.

Voters who approve of making flag-burning a crime are seeking a constitutional amendment, not a statute that is likely to be struck down by the federal courts as unconstitutional. And those voters who understand that this country's cherished freedom of speech is undermined by limits on offensive messages, including flag-burning, don't want any legal proscriptions. There is no middle ground.

Read the entire editorial here

Helen Thomas is Right

The legendary Helen Thomas has it exactly right.

If Democrats only had some courage

By HELEN THOMASHEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- It's about time that the "me too" Democrats, particularly those in Congress who vote with the Republicans so often, stand up and be counted.

Too many Democrats are tiptoeing around the major issues facing our nation, afraid to venture out of the mainstream. This is a big mistake at a time when the nation is begging for true leadership.

Democrats with the courage to be leaders could have a field day pointing out that millions of Americans lack health insurance and that 37 million have fallen below the poverty line. Soon they will no longer be able to claim that theirs is a caring political party because they won't have evidence that this is true.

Take, for example, the case of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Instead of endorsing universal health care -- a topic that she knows a lot about -- Clinton is busy co-sponsoring with Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, a law to bar desecration of the flag. Has anyone burned a flag lately?

Clinton is a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, which might explain why she's busy pandering to conservatives instead of staking out a leadership role on more important issues.

Read Thomas’ entire column here

Nixon Redux - DoD Domestic Spying

NBC News reports on a 400 page Pentagon report of it spying on anti-war groups and protests. Cheny/Rumsfeld administration outrages just keep on coming.

Read the NBC report here

Rejection of Neoliberalism

I found very interesting this article about how developing countries are harmed by adopting the “neoliberal” policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as encouraged by the U.S. The article reports on a paper by Ha Joon Chang that argues that industries in developing nations must be protected until they are able to compete with those in countries with mature economies, that the “free trade” advocated by the U. S. and Europe harms developing economies, and reports on a number of examples cited by Chang.

It seems that Latin American nations are one by one coming to the Chang’s conclusion and are electing governments that resist U. S. pressures to adopt the neoliberal policies. It looks as though Boliva will be next to do so and then, perhaps, Mexico.

Read the Guardian article here

Check This Out

I unearthed this baby today while rooting around the back yard.

If anyone can identify it I will appreciate knowing what type it is. I estimate it is about two inches long, including its legs.

Update: The best I have so far been able to determine it is a Mexican Redrump Tarantula, but I'm still looking.

Abramoff's Bribes

The Washington Post has a couple of nice graphics of the top 20 congressional recipients of Abramoff bribes. Six of the top twenty are democrats, including Patty Murray of Washington (one of Boeing's congressional whores), Harry Reid, Patrick Kennedy, Gephardt, Dorgan, and Daschle.

View the WP graphic here

Secret Laws

Did you know that in the U. S. there are secret laws and regulations? I didn’t either.

Read the report here

Garden Update

Here is a picture of the garden I took today. I am done excavating for the time being, though am thinking about expanding the garden area. For now I will concentrate on planting the area I’ve already developed.

Since I last reported I’ve planted garlic, onions, another planting of lettuce, and a variety of larger tomatoes. The lettuce is doing famously, in fact I ate the first picking on my burritos this evening. The Roma type tomatoes and watermelon have withstood an attack of American Serpentine Leaf Miners which are the larva of small flies which lay their eggs within the leaves. The larva then wander through the leaves feeding on the chlorophyll and other elements, leaving a serpentine white trail. I read that ants are one of the leaf miner’s many predators so assume the ants took care of them.

The Roma tomato plants have recovered nicely and are just about large enough to be moved from their containers to the garden. A couple of the watermelon plants have become so large that they have lain over and are producing tendrils. Some of the cantaloupe plants have succumbed for some reason so I have replanted. Others are doing well and putting on lots of new growth.

Some of the garlic I planted last week has emerged and the seeds of the larger tomato variety have sprouted in their nursery.

Armando, my 88 year old Cuban American neighbor, continues to bring me coffee grounds from the shop he frequents; and which, upon his advice, I visited a couple days ago to buy some decent coffee. In fact, it is very, very good coffee. I bought espresso beans ground as fine as the grinder can produce.

I have also purchased a small trash can with a tight lid into which Joel and Armando are now depositing their kitchen wastes for the compost pile. Speaking of the compost pile, it is ready for turning so yesterday I walked the few blocks to the local hardware store and though the proprietor did not have a pitch fork in stock he promised me he would have it for me Monday morning. The proprietor, an older gentleman, was “muy amble”, as they say here, and was very talkative and inquisitive. We enjoyed a nice chat until another customer arrived and required his attention.

One of the things I really like about Merida is that there are small specialty shops in each neighborhood, which together provide almost anything one needs or wants. There is the Walmart, Chedraui, Office Depot, Costco, and I suppose other big boxes; but the neighborhood stores remain. Perhaps because most, I assume, folks don’t have cars. I am very much enjoying the fact I can walk, generally a short distance, to buy whatever I need.

Concert in the Park

This evening I walked to Parque Santa Ana, about 5 blocks from my apartment, as each weekend evening there is music, dancing, and food and craft vendors. As it turned out there was no dancing but there was a concert of Christmas carols in sign language. It seemed to me that the performance was by students and staff of a school for the deaf, but that is only an assumption.

None-the-less it was impressive and I was amazed at the numbers of folks in the audience who signed along with the songs.

Looming over the park is the communications tower you can see in this, not so good, photo that has been decorated for Christmas.

The "Free Market" in the U. S.

The New York Times article linked below describes how the “free market” system works in the U. S. Some businessperson makes a “campaign contribution”, read as legalized bribe, to a congressperson, in this case Joe Knollenberg of Michigan, and the dumb ass congressperson sponsors legislation that directs Amtrak to spend Congressionally appropriate funds that directly benefit the businessperson tendering the bribe. The dumb ass congressperson justifies the appropriation by asserting that it will be a good Amtrak business practice, as if he is more qualified to determine prudent Amtrak business practices than are the professional Amtrak managers.

Congressmen Cunningham and Ney will be spending time in jail for this type of corrupt practice, which unfortunately is the rule with Congress rather than the exception.

Read the NYT article here.

Joe Lieberman's Brown Nose

Now we know why Lieberman has been stuffing is nose further and further up George Bush’s ass.

Read why here.

Speaking of CIA Kidnapping

The CIA also kidnapped a fellow in Italy, needing somewhere around 20 operatives to do so. The operatives stayed in the most expensive hotels, used cell phones and credit cards during and after the kidnapping allowing Italian authorities to easily track their movements to Aviano air base from where the kidnapped fellow was flown in a Lear jet to Germany and from there to Egypt where he was tortured. The kidnapping, which Italian authorities deny knowledge of, fouled an Italian investigation into the fellow.

The cast of the movie of this incident will have to include James Garner and Jack Nicholson.

Read the story here.

Abolish the CIA

Read this Steve Clemons report of what the CIA is doing in the name of every citizen of the U. S. In summary the CIA kidnapped an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent while he was vacationing in Macedonia, he was taken to Afghanistan where he was questioned while being roughed up, he was determined to be innocent but CIA director George Tenet ordered him held for another two months, then he was dumped, blindfolded, “in the deep forest, mountainous triangle area between Albania, Serbia and Macedonia. He had to walk out with no money, no identification.”

Do you think George Tenet or the CIA officials involved will ever be held to account for their illegal, inhuman acts? Fat chance.

Remember that our incurious, perpetually adolescent president presented Tenet with the Medal of Freedom for the great job he did in phoneying intelligence to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Talk about rouge nations.

Read the Steve Clemons report here

Silly Season Has Begun

It definitely is becoming silly season, which can be read as the run up to the 2008 presidential election. To wit three examples from the last few days.

Lieberman Calls For Formation Of 'War Cabinet'
By DAVID LIGHTMAN
The Hartford Courant
December 6 2005, 11:43 AM EST
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, increasingly isolated in his own Democratic party because of his strong support for the Iraq war, today called on the White House and congressional leaders to form a special "war cabinet" to provide advice and direction for the war effort.

The Connecticut Democrat's "Bipartisan Victory in Iraq Administrative Group," designed to take some of the political edge off the war debate, would be modeled after similar panels during the Vietnam War and World War II.

Lieberman, whom the Bush administration has praised repeatedly for his war stance, defended the president. "It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years," the senator said. "We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril."

[Doesn’t suggesting formation of a “War Cabinet” imply that the Bush administration is not capable of effectively executing the war, thus “undermine the president’s credibility?" Joe Lieberman is very silly.]

More McCain Attacks: Murtha ‘Sentimental,’ ‘Never Been a Big Thinker’
Think Progress web site
On Sunday, Sen. John McCain — regularly lauded for his nonpartisan “straight talk” — attacked Rep. John Murtha for having “become too emotional" over the Iraq war.

McCain was simply repeating the line he had given Byron York in an interview for the New Republic. That piece is now online, and as you’ll see below, McCain was even more personal when speaking to York:

John Murtha is “a lovable guy,” but “he’s never been a big thinker; he’s an appropriator.” Using language that Bush never could, McCain tells me that Murtha has become too emotional about the human cost of the war. “As we get older, we get more sentimental,” McCain says. “And [Murtha] has been very, very affected by the funerals and the families. But you cannot let that affect the way you decide policy.”

[McCain is 69, Murtha is 73. The fact that he can embrace Bush after what Bush and Rove did to him in South Carolina during the 2000 primaries tells me all I need to know about McCain. McCain is very silly.]

Sen. Clinton co-sponsors anti-flag burning law
December 5, 2005, 10:44 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is supporting new legislation to criminalize desecration of the United States flag though she still opposes a constitutional ban on flag attacks.

Clinton, D-N.Y., has agreed to co-sponsor a measure by Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, which has been written in hopes of surviving any constitutional challenge following a 2003 Supreme Court ruling on the subject.

[Clinton wants to legislate to criminalize flag desecration, a right recently sustained by the Supreme Court b y invalidating federal legislation, yet she opposes a Constitutional amendment to forbid it. Clinton is very silly.]

The three examples above illustrate pandering by politicians, I think, that have nothing better to offer.

Venezuelan Elections

Because Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez refuses to dance to the "neo-liberal"” tune of privatization and multinational buyout of Venezuelan national resources, the Bush administration is decrying the December 4 Venezuelan elections. ItÂ’s more utter crap from the completely discredited administration.

Election observers from Latin American nations, some closely allied with the U. S., have indicated that the withdrawal of opposition party candidates, representing 10% of the total number of candidates for election to the National Assembly, “does not delegitimize the parliamentary elections”.

Read the report here.

"How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq"

If you’re interested in reading a Juan Cole article how the U. S. actions in Iraq have created a Shiite theocracy, follow the link below. Juan Cole, if you don’t know, is a professor of history at the University of Michigan and is one of the nation’s leading Middle East Scholars.

It is ironic, and sickening, that after all of the U. S. attempts to deter theocratic regimes in the Middle East, from its deposition in 1953 of the legitimate government of Iran which ultimately precipitated the 1979 theocratic revolution to the Iraqi adventure, that the Iraqi invasion and its attempted subjugation has resulted in creation of a theocratic Iraq increasingly closely aligned with Iran.

Read Juan Cole’s article here.

Juan Cole’s web site.

Juan Coles’ Middle East Commentary – “Informed Comment”

Bull Fighting. Where's The Fight?

I watched the last 10 minutes, or so, of a “Bull Fight” broadcast from Spain (OK, so I have lots of time on my hands.) I am completely disgusted, not at the killing of a bull; but, rather, at its torture. The toreador’s outfit, I must say, was equally disgusting.

How can it be called a “fight” when your opponent has an intelligence such that he is unable learn over the course of an hour, or so, of going after a red cape that, first of all, the cape will always be pulled away and, secondly, the cape is not the enemy, it’s the guy in the Mardi Gras parade outfit sticking sharp things into his back?

The toreador, comporting pomposity on par with that of George Will or William F. Buckley and taking dainty, little shuffling steps, was dressed in gold and powder blue peddle pushers and jacket, with pink stockings and shoes similar to those delicate little slip ons that often come with tassels and which are worn, generally in the U. S. anyway, by vacuous pretty boys.

As the bull pushes his head into the cape (one can hardly call it a charge as by then the bull is completely exhausted) the toreador sticks banderillas into his back; until, finally, the bleeding, heavily panting bull is in such as state so as to enable the toreador to stick a sword into his back in an attempt to kill him. It took this particular toreador four stabs before the bull fell. Of course before the brave toreador takes after the bull, picadors on horseback stab the bull repeatedly with pics to tire the bull so it will lower its head, allowing the toreador access to the bull’s back. Some sport.

I was hoping, as I watched, that the bull would get a horn through the toreador’s gut and prance around the ring displaying his prize to the assemblage.

Folk Dancing at the Villa Navidena

Last evening in the Villa Navidena there was also a folk dancing performance to traditional music.

Folks sat at the tables and chairs that had been set up and ate, drank, and watched the performance.

It was all very festive.

Villa Navidena

A Christmas Village has been set up at the upper end of the Paseo Montejo, with a large lighted tree and lots of other lights. It's all quite beautiful.

From Friday evening through Sunday every weekend food and craft vendors set up booths in all four of the plazas and parks in my neighborhood. There is, generally, also music and dancing.

Last evening the Villa Navidena was packed with families.

Paseo Montejo

The light standards in the median of Paseo Montejo are decorated with Santa, a tree, a candle, or an angel and the large shade trees lining both sides of the boulevard are adorned with light strings.

Paseo Montejo, about two and a half blocks from my apartment, is one of the major boulevards with traffic running in both directions.

Merida Decorates for Christmas

Every block on Calle 60, for 15 or so blocks in the Centro area, is spanned by Christmas lights featuring an angel, tree, Santa, or a candle and stars. Though this picture is poor the decorations are really quite stunning.

My apartment is between Calles 62 and 64 so Calle 60 is a block and a half away.

The streets of Merida are laid out with the even numbered streets running North and South and the odd numbered street running East and West. The traffic on all the streets is one way, alternating direction, except for a number of wide boulevards with traffic running in both directions and which generally run diagonally to the numbered streets and seem to radiate from a series of traffic circles.

The streets are clean, are well lit a night, and safe for children to walk alone at night.

Merida English Library

Today I made my first visit to the Merida English Library, having read on its web site that each Saturday it has a book sale. Having long ago finished reading the books I brought with me I was looking for reading material. I picked up three used paperbacks for $10. pesos each. "Wild Card"”, written by Jerome Preisler for the Tom Clancy "“Power Play"” series; "“Black Boy" by Richard Wright; and "“Love and War in the Apennines", by Eric Newby, a true story of his evasion of the advancing German army after his release from an Italian prisoner of war camp in which was held for a year.

Additionally, yesterday Armando, my 88 year old Cuban-American neighbor, asked if I liked to read. I responded that I did and that I was looking for reading material, so he lent me two John LeCarre novels, "“The Russia House"” and "“The Little Drummer Girl." ” I'm about a third of the way through "The Russia House" and can report that it's holding my attention.

The Merida English Library has quite a collection, mostly paperbacks, offers memberships for $200. pesos per year, and hosts get togethers the first Friday of each month.

Note: Edited 12/4/05 to correct the title of the LeCarre novel to "The Russia House." I had initially written "The Russian Room" and my error was pointed out by one of my two readers.

2004 Ohio Electronic Voting Machine Irregularities

Remember how the Ohio Secretary of State, who is responsible to oversee elections, was also working as the “co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign” and how the president of Diebold, manufacturer of widely used voting machines, promised to deliver Ohio to the Bush-Cheney campaign?

According to a Lyn Davis Lear report, on HuffingtonPost.com, the General Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report that indicates widespread voting irregularities in Ohio involving electronic voting machine. Lear reports that:

Among other things, the GAO confirms that:

1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.

2. "It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.

3. "Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level." 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.

5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

Read the entire report here.

The DEA Should be Abolished

Why do our government employees in the DEA and FBI try to make criminals of law abiding folks?

Read the story, it will make you shake your head in wonder and disgust.

Coconut Harvest

This is about half the coconuts that Manuel and I harvest from the tree in the front yard. Manuel took the other half home with him.

Is the "First Mother" Going to Drop the Hammer on the Cabal?

Steve Clemons, at “The Washington Note” reports that a source has informed him that Barbara Bush is mad at the whackos inhabiting her sons administration and plans to swing into action.

Read Clemons’ report here.

Pina Coladas

This afternoon Manuel, an employee of my landlord Sr. Monsreal, and I took turns climbing the ladder to harvest the coconuts from the tree in the front yard. We got about thirty.

Manuel, Joel, and I decided that Monday evening we will have a Pina Colada party on the patio. Armando, my 88 year old neighbor, said he may also attend. We settled on Monday as Joel has to play in the symphony tomorrow night and Sunday and didn’t want the Pina Coladas affecting his trombone playing. So Monday I will make coconut milk and crank up the blender.

Been Using and Relying on Wikipedia?

If so, you will want to reconsider that reliance. As it turns out the information presented as fact on the Wikipedia site is posted by anonymous persons. The company behind Wikipedia has only one employee, has no way to identify those who post information as fact on its site, and false information is posted as fact on its site.

Read John Seigenthaler Sr.’s story.

There are plenty of reputable research sites available through the internet, Wikipedia is not one.

A Milestone

Tonight on my way back to the apartment from my evening walk, to the Independence Plaza, I was hailed by some folks in a car who, in Spanish, asked me directions and I was actually able to give them directions, also in Spanish. I strutted the rest of the way home.

Also today, my landlord, Sr. Monsreal, gave me my first electric bill which came to $105. pesos for 149 Kwh of usage. The bill was for the period of mid-September through mid-November, so I wasn’t here for 15 days of the billing period. None-the-less $105. pesos is about $10. in U. S. dollars. The electric utility is publicly owned and in the month and one half I’ve been here there has been only one outage that lasted only a couple hours one morning.

This morning I walked to the Municipal Market and bought some seeds for a larger variety of tomatoes than the Roma type tomato plants I’ve already started and onion seeds. I also picked up three heads of garlic, the cloves of which I planted in the garden this afternoon. I can also report that the mango and papaya trees I transplanted are doing well after a brief period of transplant shock.

Life is rough.

Fascism

Canadian lawyer Paul Bigioni has produced an interesting article on the relationship of the subjugation of the state to powerful economic interests, deregulation of markets, concentration of capital and fascism. Mr. Bigioni is working on a book on the subject. The article draws parallels between what is now occurring in Western economies and politics and those which facilitated the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany.

What Mr. Bigioni has to say rings very true to me and is very alarming.

Read the article here.

Iraqi Death Squads an Explicit Product of U. S. Policy

You have probably read or heard about the Shiite Iraqi death squads that some reports indicate are affiliated with the Iraqi police. Well it appears as though the death squads are a product of U. S. policy.

One of her readers reminds Laura Rozen, at “War and Piece”, of a January Newsweek report.

The El Salvadoran death squads during the Reagan years were the product of the same bunch of depraved crooks that populate the Bush administration. My life will be complete when the whole bunch is brought to account, of course that will never occur.

Read the War and Piece report here

Commander in Fact Dick Cheney Should be in Prison

By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated PressMonday, November 28, 2005; 6:50 PM
WASHINGTON -- A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees arose from White House and Pentagon officials who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful" and the Geneva Conventions irrelevant.

In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush's detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

[You Know Me: All evidence clearly indicates that Cheney falls into the “nefarious bastard” category.]

On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined support for the Iraq war.

Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said.”

Read the AP story here.

Wilkerson is, you will remember, is no radical left winger. He is a retired Colonel and long-time aide to Colin Powell. He clearly indicates that Cheney is running the show and is very angry at Cheney’s misdeeds.

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Rhodes, Hadley, Rice, Powell, Perle, Gingrich, and a whole host of other Bush administration officials should be in prison for their multiple crimes against humanity and the U. S. Constitution. Bush should be impeached and removed from office for a violation of oath of office to uphold the Constitution, which he has clearly failed to do in allowing the violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Obstruction of Justice and Perjury Charges for Rove?

It looks likely that Rove will be charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Rove’s personal assistant, Susan Ralston, apparently lied to the Fitzgerald inquiry, was caught in her lie by investigators, was called back for further testimony, and fessed up that Rove had instructed her to not log the call from Time magazine reporter Mathew Cooper.

Additionally, Rove has “withheld crucial facts” from investigators on three occasions.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving individual. I just hope Ralston is indicted as well.

Read the "Raw Story" report here

Immigrant Agricultural Labor

Let’s see. We in the U. S. like cheap food, almost all of us refuse to work in the agricultural industry, there are hoards of folks in other countries that are happy to work in our agricultural industry, and we refuse to let them into our country so they can do such work. That makes about as much sense as many of the other things that go on in the U. S.

Read the Washington Post report here.

I will spare you my rant on the dumb asses and demagogic politicians who deride the immigrants who come here to fulfill a labor demand which U. S. citizens refuse to fulfill.

This Evening in the Back Yard

This evening as I was in the back yard to water a couple of cantaloupe sprouts, from seeds I planted to replace a cantaloupe plant the had "dampened off", Ignacio, a neighbor from across the back yard wall, whom I had not heretofore met, was standing on the back terrace of his home. We struck up a conversation about my gardening project and he soon asked if I wanted a papaya tree start. Of course I answered "yes", he left, and soon returned with a small papaya tree. Then he asked if I wanted an orange tree, which of course I did. He left and soon returned with a small orange tree; but, from I was able to understand, it is of the sour variety grown here abouts. He also brought me starts of two different herbs, of what type I'm afraid I don't know but which are apparently used for flavoring beans.

As the conversation progressed I went and got a bottle of rum I had in the house and we sat, drank, and talked; he on the wall and me in the back yard. At one point my neighbor, Joel, came out to get his dog, Rusty, and announced that he was going to see a movie. Joel seemed to indicate, without getting specific, that I really shouldn't be talking to Ignacio. Ignacio, I must admit, does seem a bit off balance, as they say; but we had a good conversation none-the-less. Besides, I'm certainly not in a position to criticize anyone for being of balance.

At any rate I ended up with a papaya tree start. I also have a mango tree start growing from seed at the base of the mango tree in the back yard. Papaya has become a daily component of my breakfast and I look forward to the mangoes, that apparently ripen in May and June.

Friday Evening at the Symphony

I went again to the Yucatan Symphony Friday evening. The program was music by Mexican composers, with seven vocal selections.

Next Friday the program will be five of the brass players, two trumpets, a French horn, and my neighbor Joel on the trombone.

Living in the Satsop for almost thirty years I rarely had an opportunity attend symphonic concerts so it’s a real treat for me to have the concert hall just up the street.

Soil Sifting Operation

Here's my soil sifting operation. I am using palm frond stems to support the hardware cloth. I excavate the soil with my mattock, throw a shovel full of material on the screen, rub the material around until all of the soil goes through, then flick the stones remaining on the screen into the stone pile, which you can see in the foreground. You can see a pile of screened soil at the upper left.

Ok, so I'm a bit short on posting ideas today. Besides, I know that some of you become tired of my tirades and political postings, so thought you might enjoy pictures of my peasant gardening operation.

Watermelon Close Up

The watermelons and cantaloupes are sprouting their third sets of leaves.

Lettuce and Cantaloupe Close Ups

Bill Richardson's Presidential Ambitions Go Down the Tube

Why would anyone lie about being drafted by the Kansas City Athletics?

Read all about it here, if you're interested.

Garden Update

Here is a shot of the back yard. In the foreground is the black plastic covered compost pile, which is really cooking now and teeming with mice feasting of my fruit and vegetable scraps. The bed by the blue buckets is now home to 24 little lettuce plants that are slowly growing.

Beyond the lettuce bed can be seen the screen I am using to sift the ubiquitous stones from the soil to produce a suitable medium for the tomatoes and habaneras. I have spread the sifted stones to form a path between the lettuce bed and compost pile.

In the distance can be seen the four round beds in which are planted six watermelon and seven cantaloupe plants that are also growing slowly.

Yesterday, Manuel, and employee of my landlord Sr. Monsreal, cut the back yard with a barely functioning weed eater, though I had already cut the area around the melon beds with my machete. Sr. Monsreal, by the way, is a really wonderful fellow who, when I ask if my gardening project is creating any problems, repeatedly tells me that he wants me to consider "this your home."

Yesterday I also bought eight sacks of soil from the mountains from one of the fellows that periodically drives down the street in his horse drawn cart hollering "tierra, tierra." It is rich, dark, loamy soil which I will use when transplanting the tomatoes and habaneras.

With all of the hacking with my mattock, chopping with my machete, and sifting of the soil I am getting lots of exercise, losing weight, getting quite tan, and have convinced the neighbors that I am indeed El Gringo Loco. I'm feeling quite proud of my work, not to mention that it keeps me out of the bars.

National Health Insurance

Many of us have been arguing for a single payer, government operated health insurance program for quite some time. Our arguments have been met with red baiting. You know the trope.

Well, now that GM is facing bankruptcy and other mega-corporations are facing the financial pains wrought by a profit driven health care system, we should soon be seeing a nationalized, government operated health insurance program.

After all, what's good for GM is good for the nation. Not to mention, of course, that those mega-corporations exercise undue influence on our political system.

Remember Ubercrook Jack Abramoff?

Remember Jack Abramoff, the republican machine bag man/lobbyist already indicted for bank fraud related to the purchase of the SunCruz casino boat operation and whose other indicted business partner, Micahel Scanlon, has agreed to testify against Abramoff relative to the bribery of various congresspersons, including Ohio republican Bob Ney? Abramoff, you will also remember, is very close to DeLay and Rove.

Abramoff’s business partner in the purchase of SunCruz casino boat operation, Adam Kidan, has been implicated by one of the arrested mobster hit men, Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello, in the gangland execution of Gus Boulis, who, because he was not a citizen of the U. S., was forced to sell Sun Cruz, which Abramoff and Kidan have been charged with fraudulently purchasing.

The money paid for the murder allegedly was paid from a Sun Cruz business account. “Kidan had been fighting with Boulis for control of SunCruz Casino, a cruise ship gambling operation based out of Dania Beach” according to the report in the Sun-Sentinel.

Read the report here.

And here's more on the widening Abramoff investigation, for those interested.

Attn: UR

Don't I even get a hint of what I missed last evening? I would be interested in meeting (particularly if you are who I am hoping you are but probably aren't) but under less mysterious circumstances. How about coffee, or something more adventuresome, at the place of your choice?
I'll buy.

This Guy Should Be President

And Joel Connelly should be Vice-president

JOEL CONNELLYSEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
CHENEY -- A sky-high dreamer from the Big Sky State, Gov. Brian Schweitzer aims to make Montana government a lobbyist-free zone and to "create the new energy center of the world."
The mint farmer and cattle rancher -- he once exported bull semen -- has already accomplished a near impossible task. He has revived the Democratic Party in an inland-west state snubbed by his party's presidential candidates.

A statewide poll released last week by Montana State UniversityBillings gives Schweitzer an approval rating of 68 percent, compared with 45 percent for President Bush. Schweitzer is getting noticed in nearby states.

The Montana governor whipped off his bolo tie for auction recently at a Spokane fund-raiser for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. It went for $2,500.

"He's not your Seattle-type Democrat," said state Rep. David Gallik, a legislator from Helena who once worked as a U.S. Senate aide in Seattle.

Schweitzer was quick to make the same point during a visit to watch Eastern Washington play his alma mater, Montana State. "Well, look," he said, "the Democratic Party has allowed a few to be defining its message, but the party is a big tent."

But the governor is no fan of the Democratic Leadership Council -- the centrist outfit, once headed by an ambitious Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton, that is populated by Washington, D.C., lobbyists and funded by their corporate overlords.

"Washington, D.C., is a giant cesspool filled with special interests," Schweitzer said. "Unless we change the culture of Washington, D.C., we're not going to change the country."

I bet the DLC already has it's Rovian miners looking for dirt on this guy so they can cut him off at the knees just as they did, working with the Kerry and Gephardt campaigns, to Howard Dean.

Read Connelly’s column here.

Antonin Scalia - The Ultimate Judicial Activist

From the New York Post
November 22, 2005 -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the high court did not inject itself into the 2000 presidential election.

Speaking at the Time Warner Center last night, Scalia said: "The election was dragged into the courts by the Gore people. We did not go looking for trouble."

But he said the court had to take the case.

"The issue was whether Florida's Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court [would decide the election.] What did you expect us to do? Turn the case down because it wasn't important enough?"[emphasis added by You Know Me]

Let’s see, what did we expect the Supreme Court to do when the Bush campaign appealed the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to the U. S. Supreme Court?

How about conform to the U. S. Constitution and defer to the Florida high court?

To review in brief, on election night 2000 Florida counted the votes and determined that Bush and Cheney had received 1,700 and some more votes than did Gore and Lieberman. Gore, in accordance with Florida law, petitioned for recounts in certain counties. The Florida supreme court ordered that certain recounts proceed and that “under votes” in certain counties be counted. Bush petitioned the U. S. Supreme Court for a stay of the Florida high court’s ruling. Scalia, on behalf of the Supreme Court, accepted Bush’s petition. Ultimately a majority of the U. S. Supreme Court accepted Bush’s petition, stayed the Florida court’s ruling, and decided the election, rather than remand the matter to the Florida high court as suggested by a couple of Supreme Court justices.

I’m a college drop out, so am no legal scholar; but the Constitution seems quite clear to me on the subject of appointing “electors” to the Electoral College. Please, those schooled in the subject correct me if I’m wrong in my facts or conclusions.

Article II of the U. S. Constitution provides that:
Section I
[1] The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and together with the Vice-President, chosen for the same term, be elected as follows:
[2] Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of Electors, [emphasis added by You Know Me] equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

So the Constitution clearly establishes it as a duty of the states to determine how they are to appoint electors.

Article X of the Bill of Rights, or the tenth amendment to the Constitution, provides:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It seems to me to be very simple. The state’s are assigned the duty to appoint electors and nothing in the Constitution even implies a role for the federal government in doing so. If the U. S. Supreme Court determined a Constitutional violation in the Florida high court’s adjudications then it should have remanded the matter to the Florida court as seems to be the norm for appellant courts, not decided the election as it did.

Justice Scalia talks a good line about eschewing judicial activism; but when it came to the most important decision to become before the Supreme Court during his tenure, he opted for activism.

Scalia is an ideologue and, despite his protestation otherwise, a judicial activist; and, thus, a hypocrite. Aside from that he is a very articulate, entertaining, humorous fellow and a completely arrogant pedant.

Bush Wanted to Bomb al-Jazeera Headquarters

The British newspaper the Daily Mirror is reporting, based upon a “Downing Street memo” described as a “five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister” that Bush told Blair that he wanted to bomb the headquarters of the al-Jazeera news agency “in the business district of Doha, the capital of Qatar.”

Blair reportedly convinced Bush of what a terrible idea it was.

Read the report here.

"The Man Who Sold the War"

James Bamford, a best selling author, reports in the “Rolling Stone” on the “The Man Who Sold the War”. He reports that the Pentagon and CIA’s hiring of the Rendon Group to sell the world on the plan to conquer Iraq. And guess what? One of the chief media conduits for the sales job was none other than Judith Miller.

It’s a fascinating story and one that should alarm every American. What in the world are our government agencies doing hiring marketing firms for the purpose of lying to us? And it’s not just the Bush administration, the Rendon Group was hired during the Clinton presidency. It is, if I’m not mistaking, a specific violation of law for our government to produce propaganda.

Our political system has rotted to its core; and that rot is shared by those media, religious, labor, and political organizations, and they are very many, that have abetted the corruption of our political system.

Read the “Rolling Stone” story here. It should make you really mad.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1132253345109&has-player=false

Another Reason to Abolish the Death Penalty

The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas executed an man in 1993 for a crime he did not commit in 1984, when 17 years old.

Read the Chronicle story here.

Neretva River Delta

This is an area of the Neretva River delta on the Dalmatian cost of Croatia that has been intensively developed for agriculture.

Remember Curveball?

Remember “Curveball”, the Iraqi “engineer” whom was served up by Chalabi and the INC. Laura Rozen excerpts an L. A. Time piece "How the U. S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball'" that includes the following gem.

But for the fact that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed and maimed, that the Iraqi infrastructure has been destroyed, that Iraq is increasingly coming under the influence of Iran, and that thousands of innocent U. S. military personnel have been killed and maimed, this would really be funny.

George Tenet and some of his CIA managers should be in prison, along with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Hadley, Rhodes, Perle, and a bunch of others in the Bush administration.

From Laura Rozen’s blog “War and Piece”:
“And get this, from after the invasion, when the CIA WINPAC bioweapons analyst who had been one of the champions of Curveball's information, goes to Iraq to check out his story:”

[The following excerpted from the L. A. Times report]
After U.S troops failed to find illicit Iraqi weapons in the days and weeks after the invasion, the CIA created the Iraq Survey Group to conduct a methodical search in June 2003.

Tenet appointed Kay to head it. The pugnacious Texan was convinced that Baghdad had hidden mobile germ factories. Kay's teams returned to Djerf al Nadaf and other sites identified by Curveball.

One CIA-led unit investigated Curveball himself. The leader was "Jerry," a veteran CIA bio-weapons analyst who had championed Curveball's case at the CIA weapons center. They found Curveball's personnel file in an Iraqi government storeroom. It was devastating.

Curveball was last in his engineering class, not first, as he had claimed. He was a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted.

Most important, records showed Curveball had been fired in 1995, at the very time he said he had begun working on bio-warfare trucks. A former CIA official said Curveball also apparently was jailed for a sex crime and then drove a Baghdad taxi.

Jerry and his team interviewed 60 of Curveball's family, friends and co-workers. They all denied working on germ weapons trucks. Curveball's former bosses at the engineering center said the CIA had fallen for "water cooler gossip" and "corridor conversations."

"The Iraqis were all laughing," recalled a former member of the survey group. "They were saying, 'This guy? You've got to be kidding.' "

Jerry tracked down Curveball's Sunni Muslim parents in a middle-class Baghdad neighborhood.

"Our guy was very polite," Kay recalled. "He said, 'We understand your son doesn't like Americans.' His mother looked shocked. She said, 'No, no! He loves Americans.' And she took him into [her son's] bedroom and it was filled with posters of American rock stars. It was like any other teenage room. She said one of his goals was to go to America."

The deeper Jerry probed, the worse Curveball looked.

Childhood friends called him a "great liar" and a "con artist." Another called him "a real operator." The team reported that "people kept saying what a rat Curveball was."

Jerry and another CIA analyst abruptly broke off the investigation and took a military flight back to Washington. Kay said Jerry appeared to be nearing a nervous breakdown.

"They had been true believers in Curveball," Kay said. "They absolutely believed in him. They knew every detail in his file. But it was total hokum. There was no truth in it. They said they had to go home to explain how all this was all so wrong. They wanted to fight the battle at the CIA."

Back home, senior CIA officials resisted. Jerry was "read the riot act" and accused of "making waves" by his office director, according to the presidential commission. He and his colleague ultimately were transferred out of the weapons center.

The CIA was "very, very vindictive," Kay said.

Soon after, Jerry got in touch with Michael Scheuer, a CIA analyst who felt he had been sidelined for criticizing CIA counterterrorism tactics. Scheuer would quit within a year.
"Jerry had become kind of a nonperson," Scheuer recalled of their meeting. "There was a tremendous amount of pressure on him not to say anything. Just to sit there and shut up."
A CIA spokeswoman confirmed the account, but declined to comment further. Jerry still works at the CIA and could not be contacted for this report. His former supervisor, reached at home, said she could not speak to the media. "What was done to them was wrong," said a former Pentagon official who investigated the case for the presidential commission. "But we didn't see it so much as a cover-up as an expression of how profoundly resistant to recognizing mistakes the CIA culture was."

Kay's findings

In December 2003, Kay flew back to CIA headquarters. He said he told Tenet that Curveball was a liar and he was convinced Iraq had no mobile labs or other illicit weapons. CIA officials confirm their exchange.

Kay said he was assigned to a windowless office without a working telephone.

On Jan. 20, 2004, Bush lauded Kay and the Iraq Survey Group in his State of the Union Speech for finding "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities…. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction program would continue to this day."
Kay quit three days later and went public with his concerns.

Senator Bob Graham Puts the Lie to the Latest Republican Talking Point

Former Florida Senator and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who voted against the authorization for he illegal invasion of Iraq, points out, in Sunday's Washington Post, that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hadley, and their media propagandists are lying again, in their repeating the latest republican talking point that the 100 democratic congresspersons had access to the same intelligence to which did the Bush administration when voting to authorize the invasion.

May I also say what crap is Senator John Edward’s recent mea culpa. If Senator Graham and Vice-president Gore knew that the “intelligence” was cooked, then why did not Senators Edwards, Kerry, Clinton et al? I believe that the votes of Edwards, Kerry, Clinton, most of the other 100 democrats were driven by political calculation, as is Edwards phony mea culpa.

What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005

In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.

The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress.

I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.

Read Grahams complete statement here.

"Faking the Case Against Syria"

Trish Schuh, who write about Middle East politics, has produced a very interesting, fairly long article “Faking the Case Against Syria”. The story and the characters are all very familiar.

Read the article here.

A Busy Day for Criminal Charges

Jack Abramoff partner Michael Scanlon has been charged with conspiracy to bribe government officials. Scanlon has apparently flipped, made a deal with prosecutors, and will testify against others.

By James V. Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff WriterFriday, November 18, 2005; 4:47 PM

“Michael Scanlon, a former top congressional aide who became a partner of high-flying lobbyist Jack Abramoff, was charged today with conspiracy to bribe government officials and cheat Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.

“The government officials were not named in the court papers filed by U.S. prosecutors in the District, but details of the gifts and legislative favors provided by an official identified as ‘Representative #1’ match the alleged actions of Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee.”

Read the Scanlon criminal charge story here.

Also tied up in this scandal are Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition, who took money from certain Indian tribes with gambling enterprises to organize preachers to persuade the former Texas Attorney General, now U. S. senator Jon Corzine, to shut down other Indian gambling enterprises. Also tied up in this scandal is Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and at whose knee each week genuflect 100, or so, of the most influential republicans in Washington D. C.

Those in Washington State and those invested in Microsoft should be interested to know that Abramoff once worked for Preston Gates Ellis, the Seattle law firm of Bill Gates father, and that Microsoft, in the past, hired Abramoff and Reed to lobby for it.

Read the sordid Reed, Abramoff, Norquist tale here.

I Love Mexico

I Love Mexico

You know how at the grocery store there are people standing in the various aisles offering free samples of products? Well it’s the same here.

Today I went to Tiendas Chedraui to get another bag of lamb manure fertilizer for the garden and was approached by a woman asking if I would like a sample of Swedish Vodka in Pineapple juice. Of course, being the polite type, I felt obligated.

Considering the fact that I already had bottles of Mexican Cabernet Sauvignon and tequila in my cart I promised the young woman that on my next trip to the store I would be sure to pick up a bottle of the vodka, which sells for $112. pesos, about $10.70 U. S., for 750 milliliters, just shy of a U. S. fifth.

Another Fitzgerald Indictment & George Will - Media Whore

Sorry, this one has nothing to do with the Plame Name Game. Fitzgerald has indicted Conrad Black for fraud in the looting of Hollinger International, Inc., a Toronto based media conglomerate holding company.

“CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors announced criminal fraud charges on Thursday against Conrad Black and his former associates, accusing the ex-publisher of looting his now-shrunken media empire, once one of the world's largest.”

If you’re interested you may read the report here.

The only reason I mention this is because renowned pundit and uberpedant George Will was paid $25,000. per day to lecture the Hollinger board of directors; and then whored in his newspaper columns for Black and Hollinger, without mentioning his $25,000. per day arrangement. When Will got caught and was queried by the New York Times he responded "My business is my business. Got it?"

Read the report of Will’s prostitution here.

Raw Story Reports Hadley is Woodward's Source

Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna, who have broke lots of correct reports of the Fitzgerald investigation, are reporting, at "Raw Story" that Steven Hadley, Director of National Security, is Woodward'’s source.

Hadley, a committed neofascist who, as you will recall was placed by Director of Transition, Dick (I favor torture, can't help but lie, and could give a shit about the U. S. public as long as Haliburton and I are making a killing) Cheney as deputy to DNS Rice to make sure Condoleeza didn't interfere with his presidential plans.

If Raw Story is correct, Libby'’s indictment for obstruction of justice must have caused Hadley to become nervous.

I ask again, is there no depth to the turpitude of this pack of self-anointed Straussian "philosophers" whose unrestrained hubris causes them to believe that they may forever get away with their "“noble lies",” no matter how outrageous.

If you want to read about how these vermin think and operate, do a web search for Leo Strauss. Of course, everyone should go look at the documents at the Project for a New American Century site. PNAC is a nest of these Straussians. Look particularly for the 1998 letter to Clinton and who signed the letter. The Bush administration has been implementing the PNAC agenda, using Straussian means.

Read the Raw Story report here.

Fitzgerald Isn't Done

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in court filings that the ongoing CIA leak investigation will involve proceedings before a new grand jury, a possible sign he could seek new charges in the case.
In filings obtained by Reuters on Friday, Fitzgerald said "the investigation is continuing" and that "the investigation will involve proceedings before a different grand jury than the grand jury which returned the indictment" against Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.”

Read the report here.

Washington Post Executive Editor Discusses Woodward's Digression

Anyone whose interested, and has a has an half hour to waste, here is a link to Leonard Downie Jr.'s answers to on-line questions about Bob Woodward's withholding from Post editors, for over two years, the information he was provided by "a senior administration official" about Valarie Plame.

Read it here.

Mr. Downie, as far I as I'm concerned, doesn't provide much in the way of satisfactory explanations.

It seems to me that the fact that Woodward was all over the TV and radio talk shows disparaging the Fitzgerald, his investigation and downplaying the offense which precipitated the investigation, all the while knowing of his secret involvement, is an offense for which he should be canned. Regardless.

Mushrooms are sprouting in the compost pile, specifically on the palm frond leaves.

They are a bit yong for identification but have veils, volvas at the stem bases, and scales on the caps.

Douglas Feith's "Intelligence" Cooking Under Investigation

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's inspector general has agreed to review the prewar intelligence activities of former U.S. defense undersecretary Douglas Feith, a main architect of the Iraq war, congressional officials said on Thursday.”

Feith, you will remember, was characterized by General Tommy Franks as 'the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the planet'; and was assigned by Rumsfeld to head the “Office of Special Plans”, the Pentagon shop set up to “stovepipe” phony intelligence to Cheney and rest of the Bush administration lying crooks.

Read the story here.

Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner Skewers Torture Advocate Dick Cheney

"We have crossed the line into dangerous territory," Turner, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1970s, said on ITV news.

"I am embarrassed that the USA has a vice president for torture. I think it is just reprehensible. He (Mr Cheney) advocates torture, what else is it? I just don't understand how a man in that position can take such a stance."

Read the report here.

Bob Woodward Deposed by Fitzgerald

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward has been deposed by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the Plame Name Game investigation. Woodward has testified that a “senior administration official” informed him of Plame’s identity and her work for the CIA a month before Novak blew Plame’s cover.

Reportedly the “senior administration official” informed Fitzgerald investigators of his conversation with Woodward on November 3, shortly after Libby was indicated. The official apparently released Woodward to testify but to release his identity publicly.

So, did the subject senior administration official begin feeling heat and decided it best to fess up? Is the official now cooperating with Fitzgerald?

My guesses as to who the senior administration official might be, and they are purely wild ass guesses, are Ari Fleischer, former press secretary or Bush himself. Remember, Woodward interviewed Bush extensively, and presumably Fleischer as well, while researching for his book recently on Bush and his administration’s march to war.

Read the report here.

Full Moon Over Merida

Tiendas Chedraui

I'm so relieved, one more source of anxiety has been removed from my life. I will never again have to visit Walmart.

My new neighbors Laura and Jeff, from Canada, informed me during our dinner party Sunday evening that one block down from Walmart is a Tiendas Chedraui, essentially the Mexican version of Walmart.

Chedraui has lasagna pasta; and just about everything else imaginable, automotive supplies, clothes, food, tires, electronics and household supplies and equipment. It does not have quite the selection of electronic equipment as has Walmart; but, otherwise, its selection is comparable. I was even able to buy some organic fertilizer made from lamb manure. Hot shit. What could be better?

And I can inform my gran amigo, Life Long Harborite, that Chedraui has a 40 kilo bag of dog food for the equivalent of $13.75 U.S. I'm sorry, but I didn't check its price of toilet paper.

Apartment Complex Sunday Evening Salon

As I indicated in my Walmart confession, the occupants of the other apartments here and I had planned to have a pot luck dinner on the back patio last evening. As it turned out, it began to rain, at times quite heavily, at about 4:00 PM and continued. Consequently, the five of us squeezed around the breakfast bar in my apartment and enjoyed a fine meal of lasagna, home made rolls, salad, win, beer, and a bit of tequila.

Armando, my 88 year old Cuban neighbor who lived in the U.S. from 1958 until his retirement in the late 1970s when he moved here; Joel, the trombone player in the symphony; and Laura and Jeff, the Canadian couple who moved in last week, are all very pleasant, interesting folks. We had lots of laughs; and shared travel stories, of which Laura and Jeff have very many, while we ate and drank. Joel clued us into the fact that the Yucatan Symphony Orchestra is populated by musicians from around the world and Armando told us of his life in Cuba and the U. S.

Most of the conversation was in English, with simultaneous translation for Joel, who speaks only a bit of English, by either Armando or me.

It was great getting to know more about my neighbors; and, I think, everyone else was glad to get together to kind of break the ice. I suspect we will be having another complex salon soon.

Watermelon Bed

This is the watermelon bed I put together yesterday.

What I'm having to do is find a spot between the limestone boulders too large to remove, excavate the soil as deeply as I can with the mattock, remove the large rocks, lay stones around he excavated area, and fill in the bed with the soil from which I have sifted the rocks. The sifted soil makes a suitable transplanting medium so as to not damage the roots; and, hopefully, as the plants grow their roots will find their way through the underlying, very rocky excavated soil.

I will make similar beds for the cantaloupe and more watermelon and plant the tomatoes and habaneras in the area where I've been sifting the soil.

Rusty

Here's Rusty, my neighbor's dog I have mentioned a couple of times.

Rusty's about 6 months old and broke his rear leg a couple months ago being a bit too rambunctious in the rock strewn rear yard. He is due to have his external splint removed today.

He has a plastic water bottle chew toy with which he likes to play tug of war, growling savagely while doing so.

Rusty is a very pleasant, well behaved little guy.

Another Garden Bed

Here is a garden bed I made today and into which I transplanted the little lettuce plants. Armando, my 88 year old Cuban neighbor, brought me some old coffee with which to fertilize the starts.

The Vegetable Starts Have Outgrown the Nursery

One of my favorite correspondents suggested that I should be keeping a log and publish it when I reach 100 years. Another of my favorite correspondents observed that I haven’t posted much personal information here.

Aside from the fact that my liver and lungs are likely to fail long before I reach 100, my daily log would be very dull. My life is relaxing, peaceful, and busy; but not very exciting, thus the lack of posts containing personal information.

Here is what I suggested to my correspondent what my daily log would report:

I arose at about 6:00; turned the hot water heater on; put water on the stove for coffee; began reading the blogs I regularly visit; drank two to three cups of coffee and smoked a Mexican cigarette while reading the news; showered; prepared and ate a breakfast of watermelon, cantaloupe, papaya, banana, mandarins, and often homemade bread and eggs; worked on my gardening project; showered again; walked up town for a bit of shopping; returned home; had a fruit juice and tequila or two while lying around during the mid-day heat; worked again on my gardening project; prepared and ate a couple of burritos with refried beans, tomatoes, onions, carrots, habaneras, and avocado; hung out, watched a bit of TV while reading through the news blogs again; and went to bed about 9:00. About once a week would be an entry about my bus trip and visit to another place.

I am, however, deriving great pleasure, not to mention exercise and a good tan, from my gardening project. The picture here is of the watermelon, cantaloupe, tomato, and habanera plants which outgrew the medicine cabinet nursery where I planted the seed. I want them to grow a bit larger and heartier before I plant them in the garden so they will have a better chance of withstanding the cats, lizards, and Rusty, my next door neighbor’s dog.

A Confession

I feel I must confess a violation of one of my long held principles.

I have organized a Sunday evening dinner on the rear patio of my apartment complex with my fellow complex occupants. I indicated that I would make lasagna and bread; and Joel committed to bringing the libations, though I bought some backup libations in case we run out.

I could not find lasagna pasta at any of the places I normally shop so I asked Joel, my next door neighbor, where I could buy lasagna noodles. He unhesitatingly answered, “Walmart.” Every time I have asked Joel where I might find something I’m looking for he answers “Walmart.” I have explained to Joel that as a matter of principle I cannot shop at Walmart and would rather give my money to the local shop owners.

So today I violated my principle and paid my first ever visit to Walmart. I must say, the store has everything imaginable but its food prices are higher than at the State operated food store up the street. I ended up buying about $40. worth of food and household goods, including two boxes of lasagna noodles in hopes of avoiding future visits.

So, there, I’ve confessed to my transgression.

What's Got Into CNN? Has it Crawled Down Off the Lap of Power?

Bill Frist is the majority leader of the U. S. Senate and says he doesn’t care if the U. S. government is operating “black site” secret gulag/torture centers.

From CNN:

"My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security -- period," Frist said. "That is a legitimate concern."

And

Frist was asked if that meant he was not concerned about investigating what goes on in detention centers.

"I am not concerned about what goes on and I'm not going to comment about the nature of that," Frist replied.

Read the CNN report here.

New York Mayor Bloomberg

Spent $80 - $100 million to get reelected mayor.

That's unbelievable, even though the guy is a billionaire.

Dover, Pennsylvania Voters Intelligently Clean House

Voters in Dover, Pennsylvania have replaced “Eight Republican school board members who ordered a statement on intelligent design read in biology class ....... with Democrats who oppose the policy.”

The school board’s decision, as you will recall, is subject of a federal lawsuit filed by eight Dover families challenging the board’s unintelligent decision.

Read the story here.

A Multi-national Apartment Complex

The fourth, and heretofore only unoccupied, apartment within the complex in which I live has been rented to a Canadian couple. The apartment next to me, as I’ve mentioned a couple of times, is occupied by a Spanish fellow who plays in the Yucatan Symphony Orchestra and the apartment next to him is occupied by a en elderly Cuban fellow who moved here 27 years ago upon his retirement at 62.

All are very pleasant; and the Canadian couple, whom I’ve met today, expressed their interest in assisting with the gardening project.

Combating Hospital/Nursing Home Super Bugs

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The growing problem of drug-resistant staph infections in hospitals needs a fresh approach -- including antibiotic-free hospitals and perhaps a dose of "good" bacteria on surgeons' hands, one researcher argues.

Writing in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Dr. Mark Spigelman lays out a proposal for combating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. This so-called "superbug" is untreatable with most antibiotics and can cause potentially deadly complications like pneumonia, bloodstream infections and surgical wound infections.

Read the report here.

Can the Depths of Bush Administration Turpitude Be Plumbed Any Deeper?

Reportedly, president Cheney met with republican senators for a Nov. 1 luncheon, I’m guessing to continue his lobbying for a CIA exemption to the anti-torture measures Senators McCain and Graham are attempting to attach, as an amendment, to legislation. The McCain/Graham amendment has been supported by all but the nuttiest nine senators, all republicans.

During the luncheon Cheney informed the assemblage of CIA operated secret prisons in various Eastern European nations, in which suspected “terrorists” could be confined, and presumably tortured, with minimal prospect of publicity. The gulags are reportedly housed in former Soviet gulags. How’s that for irony?

The day after the luncheon Dana Priest of the Washington Post, one of a few remaining real reporters, reported on the presence of the secret CIA gulags.

Aghast that such “classified” information was publicized, chief senate republican hack, Bill Frist, and the chief house republican hackster , Dennis Hastert, announced they had sent letters to the chairs of the house and senate intelligence committees asking them to launch investigations into the matter of who leaked the information of the gulags to the Washington Post.

Almost immediately, senator Trent Lott, of Mississippi, (who you will remember was deposed as senate leader by Rove and replaced by Frist) informed CNN that the leak most probably came from a republican senator, as "Every word that was said in there went right to the newspaper," he said. "We can't keep our mouths shut." Lott also reportedly said "We can not remain silent. We have met the enemy, and it is us."

It is not surprising, given their turpitude, that Frist and Hastert are more concerned with the fact the presence of the illegal gulags was leaked to the press then they are about the fact that the U. S., in all of its superior moral rectitude, is operating gulags in former Soviet era compounds.

My question is, if it is a crime to reveal the “classified” presence of the gulags, then wasn’t it a crime for Cheney to reveal their presence to an assemblage of republican senators? Not all senators, as I understand, have the necessary clearance to receive classified information. Can someone elucidate this matter?

Are You Eating Tyson Foods

This report from Kevin Drum at his “Political Animal” blog at the “Washington Monthly site suggests to me that folks should avoid buying IBP, Inc. meat or other products from Tyson Foods.

“CHICKENFEED....Do companies have to pay workers for time spent donning and doffing protective gear? Yes they do. The Supreme Court said so in 1946.
“In response, Congress passed the Portal-to-Portal Act in 1947. It stated that companies were not required to pay employees for traveling to or from their place of work, or for activities that were "preliminary or postliminary" to work.
“So how about that protective gear? Does putting it on count as preliminary? Nope. The Supreme Court decided in 1956 that it was a "principal activity" that still needed to be compensated.
“Damn. But perhaps....if we look hard enough....there's still a thin sliver of something in there that shouldn't be compensated. After all, a few minutes a day times thousands of workers can really add up. But what?
“How about this: the time spent walking to the assembly line after donning protective gear but before the first piece of work comes down the line. How about if we deduct that from worker paychecks?
“The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that this claim was idiotic ("unpersusasive" was the more restrained term used by the court). Good for them. After all, both common sense and statutory law suggest that if donning protective gear is work, and if dressing meat on the assembly line is work, then the time required by the company to get from one to the other is also work.
“But the real story here is that IBP Inc., a meatpacker owned by Tyson Foods, litigated this all the way to the Supreme Court. They tried their best, using thousands of billable hours from the finest legal talent they could buy, to screw their workers out of the few minutes a day it took them to walk from the locker room to the assembly line and back. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?”

Link to the “Political Animal”

Plant Nursery

Last Wednesday I located a store that sells vegetable seeds and purchased lettuce, tomatoes, habanera peppers, cantaloupe and watermelon seeds.

Upon returning home I filled my plant nursery with soil I excavated and planted the seed. The nursery consists of a discarded medicine cabinet I found in the back yard.

The seeds are sprouting. At the bottom of the photo is a row of lettuce; in the center section are watermelon and cantaloupe; and in the upper section, not visible in the photo, are tomatoes. The habaneras have not yet sprouted.

This morning I am off to the central market for some chicken wire with which to keep Rusty, my neighbor's miniature Pincher, out of the garden; a shovel; a rake; and some hardware cloth to sieve the rocks from soil to produce a more suitable soil in which to transplant the starts.

Welcome to the National Security State

The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman reports on the Bush administration promiscuous use of “National Security letters” to obtain private information about U. S. citizens. The fascism that has been heretofore creeping is now up and running.

Read the report here.

Here are a couple of excerpts.

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

And

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.

The Hits Just Keep on Coming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should reimburse Iraq for $208 million in apparent overcharges paid to a Halliburton Co. subsidiary, an U.N. watchdog agency said on Saturday.

The International Advisory and Monitoring Board for the Development of Iraq conducted a special audit on Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root unit for the procurement and distribution of fuel products and the restoration of Iraq's oil infrastructure.

Read the story here.

Friday Night at the Symphony

Last night I again attended a performance of the Orquesta Sinfonica de Yucatan but this time bought a ticket on Thursday so I was able to sit on the ground floor.

The orchestra performed the “Egmont Overture” and the “Fifth Symphony” by Beethoven and “Fantasia” by Francoise Borne, which featured Joquin Melo, an apparently quite renowned flutist, not that I would know, of course.

At any rate it was another very enjoyable performance and I actually recognized a number of the pieces, though I wouldn’t know them by name.

Bush Crony Tomlinson Under Investigation

Now Kenneth Tomlinson who was ousted from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board of directors on Thursday and who was the “head of the federal agency that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, is the subject of an inquiry into accusations of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees, officials involved in that examination said Friday, the New York Times'” is reporting.

Read the story here.

President Cheney's Office Developed U. S. Torture Policy

Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, has told NPR that he has traced the U. S. torture policy to President Cheney’s office.

Read the report here.

Update: Steve Clemons provides more information.

Nine Republican U. S. Senators Support CIA Torture

Kudos to republican Senators John McCain, of Arizona and a subject of torture; Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina and a veteran; all democratic senators, and all republican senators except the following nine for sponsoring and voting for an appropriations bill amendment prohibiting torture by U. S. government employees in all cases.

At the urging of the Bush administration, as represented by Arch-angel Cheney, the following senators have indicated through their votes, that the CIA, the proprietor of secret gulags and torture chambers, should be exempt from the torture ban.

Allard (R-CO)Bond (R-MO)Coburn (R-OK)Cochran (R-MS)Cornyn (R-TX)Inhofe (R-OK)Roberts (R-KS)Sessions (R-AL)Stevens (R-AK)

It is bad enough that the congress must pass legislation instructing the Bush administration to observe the Geneva Convention, to which the U. S. is a signatory, because we have a bunch of criminals populating the administration; but to have nine senators vote against the ban is sad commentary indeed.

Congratulations Oklahoma for being the only state with both of its senators favoring torture. (OK senator Coburn, by the way, is on the record as favoring execution for doctors who perform abortions.) Oh, and congratulations to those who voted to reelect president Cheney and his stooge George Bush.

FOX "News" Pays DeLay $13,998.55 to Appear on Faux News Sunday

Why would FAUX “News” pay Tom Delay almost $14,000. to appear on Faux News Sunday the weekend after DeLay was indicted? Uh, perhaps as a means of contributing to DeLay’s defense fund?

This payment to DeLay should remove any doubt that anyone may have had that FOX News is nothing more than the Ministry of Information for the republican political machine or that Brit Hume, its “news” director, is the most promiscuous media whore? Of course, it won’t; as there are those, to whom fact is irrelevant, who will continue to eagerly lap up and regurgitate the Fox propaganda as fact.

Read the report here.

Libby Asked Bolton Who Sent Wilson to Niger

Larisa Alexandrovna and Jason Leopold, who have done accurate, original and well sourced reporting of details of the Plame Name Game, are reporting on the web site "Raw Story" that “two key prosecution witnesses now cooperating with the probe told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the events that led to Libby learning about Wilson's mission and Valerie Plame Wilson's identity” have indicated that “John Bolton, the former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was contacted by I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby in late May 2003 to find out who sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger.”

Considering that Raw Story’s reporting of the Plame affair has thus far been quite accurate I am proceeding from withholding gloating to preliminary gloating over the fact that some time ago I suggested Plame’s identity was passed around to administration hit men by Bolton. I am, however, withholding a full blown gloat pending further confirmation.

Read the report here.

Cheney Rumsfeld Cabal

Here is a great illustration of the relationships, both official and otherwise, of the primary neo-fascist players who lied and dirty tricked their way into the illegal invasion of Iraq.

I don't see Colin Powell's name on the chart; and it was he, in the good soldierly manner in which he attained the heights of power, who lied to the U.N. He may have rejected many of the lies that Libby tried to insert into his speech but he still lied. I believe that he knew there were things that he was saying that weren't supported by the evidence.

Of course, let's not forget that there are plenty of dumb asses in congress, on both sides of the aisle, who voted for war.

Harry Reid Leaves Frist Flummoxed

I must say that Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader, is certainly making Tom Daschle look like the hapless minority leader he was.

Reid has out smarted the entire Senate republican leadership and with the help of other democratic senators forced the republicans to agree to the long promised and long stymied (by the republican Intelligence Committee chair Pat Roberts) Phase II investigation and report of the phony Iraqi intelligence that Cheney, et al, used to parade the nation into the illegal Iraqi invasion. In doing so, Reid reportedly had Frist and other republican senators completely flummoxed.

Another interesting development, I think, is former senate majority leader Trent Lott beginning to exact his revenge on Rove and Frist for their orchestration of Lott’s bum’s rush in the wake of Lott’s laudatory remarks of Strom Thurman’s segregationist history.

It appears that Frist, with his own substantial ethical and resulting legal problems, has lost control of the U. S. Senate. That and the fact that the Bush administration is imploding bodes well for democratic chances of regaining control of the Senate next year. Of course, since the national democratic leadership are bereft of any core principles and since the Rovian DLC continues to wield considerable influence in the national democratic party, I don’t expect much to change.