Memorial Sunday

In the orthodox church (or at least our branch of it), we spend the Sunday after Easter at the cemetery, having the graves of our dearly departed blessed. There is a small service at each family's grave site, with singing from the choir, and then a picnic.

Death is celebrated because, as we sing, "Christ destroyed Death with his death."

It reminds me a bit of the Day of the Dead that I celebrated in Guatemala many years ago. There, too, families picnicked at the cemetery, but there were cotton candy and ice cream vendors, and the firemen had a big exhibit and raffle with loud merengue music right at the gates. It was a much more festive celebration.

Afterwards, we went to my cousin Val's house for pizza, vodka, and family time. All of the third generation were present, and we decided to get the annual photograph (or at least give it a good try). It is a challenge to not only get all thirteen kids (aged from 1 to 14) together, but all l looking in the same direction, with no one child blocking another, and no one making faces or picking their nose. Of the twenty shots or so that I took, one met that criterion:

You can actually see Ava's entire face! (Well, you can, if you click on the photo to make it bigger.)

Front (standing L to R): Alexandra with Devan, Kalyna with doggy Zach, Lucas
Back (in the tree L to R): Zach, Matthew, Ava, Yarko, Roman, Nick, Maria
Way back: Andrew (aka "Driko") with Dmitria

Mission Accomplished

If we had paid heed to Jimmy Carter, who had initiated several alternative fuel/energy independence programs, or even Richard Nixon, who foresaw the problems that depending on importation of oil would bring, the US could have been secure in its own energy supplies. (Heck, Brazil–-yes, BRAZIL--has achieved energy independence using our technologies and our own GM vehicles!)

Yes, the US came TWICE close to achieving energy independence, not to mention cleaner air and, yes, less global warming. But one brave man stepped in, defending Big Oil and various mid-eastern tyrants, making America safe for Hummers and SUVs, and stopped this travesty. A true Profile in (Big Oil) Courage:

Iran

When Clinton left office, we had peace and prosperity . Oil was $28 a gallon. Unemployment was at record lows. Human rights were being respected. Democracy was flourishing and spreading throughout the world.

Then came the SCOTUS coup d'etat. Unemployment is up, wages are stagnant or declining, millions of workers have lost their benefits and retirement plans. But corporate profits are at record highs. Oil is at $70 a barrel (or, as Bush the Oilman would say, "Mission Accomplished"). People, both ours and theirs, are dying daily in Iraq (and Afghanistan, too, which is less and less stable as each day passes). More and more women are now being oppressed in our client states by Sharia law, passed with the consent of the Bush Administration.

As if they hadn't accomplished enough already, Bush, Cheney and Rove are now casting their gaze on Iran--surely that war would be a good war, bring up their poll numbers, and save the Republican majorities this fall. I mean, what could go wrong?

Zbigniew Brzezinski had a bit to say today in an editorial:

Iran's announcement that it has enriched a minute amount of uranium has unleashed urgent calls for a preventive U.S. air strike by the same sources that earlier urged war on Iraq. If there is another terrorist attack in the United States, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be also immediate charges that Iran was responsible in order to generate public hysteria in favor of military action.

He outlines four reasons why we should not attack Iran:

But there are four compelling reasons against a preventive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities:

1. In the absence of an imminent threat (with the Iranians at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without formal Congressional declaration, it would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the President. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the UN Security Council either alone by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).

2. Likely Iranian reactions would significantly compound ongoing U.S. difficulties in Iraq and in Afghanistan, perhaps precipitate new violence by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in all probability cause the United States to become bogged down in regional violence for a decade or more to come. Iran is a country of some 70 million people and a conflict with it would make the misadventure in Iraq look trivial.

3. Oil prices would climb steeply, especially if the Iranians cut their production and seek to disrupt the flow of oil from the nearby Saudi oil fields. The world economy would be severely impacted, with America blamed for it. Note that oil prices have already shot above $70 per barrel, in part because of fears of a U.S./Iran clash.

4.America would become an even more likely target of terrorism, with much of the world concluding that America's support for Israel is itself a major cause of the rise in terrorism. America would become more isolated and thus more vulnerable while prospects for an eventual regional accommodation between Israel and its neighbors would be ever more remote.

He concludes:

American policy should not be swayed by a contrived atmosphere of urgency ominously reminiscent of what preceded the intervention in Iraq.

Read the whole thinghere.

Newest Pysanky

Here is a photo of some of the three dozen pysanky I added to my collection this year (new designs). I couldn't get them to pose properly, so had to crop down the resulting photo to this small image. I will try another group shot tomorrow......

Click on the image for a better view.

WPE: It's Official!

From the new issue of Rolling Stone:

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.

Historians do tend, as a group, to be far more liberal than the citizenry as a whole -- a fact the president's admirers have seized on to dismiss the poll results as transparently biased. One pro-Bush historian said the survey revealed more about "the current crop of history professors" than about Bush or about Bush's eventual standing. But if historians were simply motivated by a strong collective liberal bias, they might be expected to call Bush the worst president since his father, or Ronald Reagan, or Nixon. Instead, more than half of those polled -- and nearly three-fourths of those who gave Bush a negative rating -- reached back before Nixon to find a president they considered as miserable as Bush. The presidents most commonly linked with Bush included Hoover, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan. Twelve percent of the historians polled -- nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success -- flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.

Read the whole article here.

Operation Eyesight

Feeling charitable? Yes, I know it's tax day, but while filling out all my tax forms and filing them, I came across a printout of an e-mail that I received from Mary Ganguli a few weeks back. Some college mates of hers are working in India to help restore the eyesight of poor people. They are performing cataract surgeries in Sriperumbudur (near Chennai, in Tamil Nadu).

They (John and Suriyatha David) write:

As some of you might know Suriya & I worked in a very rural part of AP for 18 years at the Arogyavaram eye hospital (1976 to 1994). After that we moved to Chennai for our children's studies. Suriya started the Eye Care Program at the Prepare Hospital in 1994.

Over the years with God's grace, hard work, inputs and financial support from Prepare & Operation Eyesight of Canada, the work has grown by leaps & bounds to such an extent that Prepare decided to hand over the whole hospital for eye work.

Today the Hospital is entering its 12th year of service at Sriperumbudur (50 kms from Chennai--sadly became famous after Rajiv Gandhi's tragic death) serving two districts of Kanchipuram & Tiruvallur with a combined population of over 6 lakhs (600,000). It is a very modern hospital & a boon to the people of this area, who otherwise had to travel to Chennai for all their eye ailments.

We want to target 1000 cataract surgeries for this year for patients who cannot afford to pay. For this dream to come true we need your help. For just US$ 22 we can provide one person the "gift of Sight". (This compares to a cost of US$1000 or more in the western world.)

We request as many of you to come forward & support this noble cause, To give people back not just their sight, but also their dignity. All donations will be acknowledged & digital photos of patients operated upon will be sent to you by e-mail with all the details of the patient.

Do look at our web site.

Johnny & Suriya

This program is being sponsored by a Canadian organization, Operation Eyesight Universal, which is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. OEU will issue a receipt to US donors if they write Operation Eyesight Universal (USA) on their donation check (the donor must write this down on their check). Receipts will be issued in a letter form (as per US receipt guidelines).

Address

OEU-Canada World HQ
# 4 Parkdale Crescent NW
Calgary, AB T2N 3T8
Canada

If you're feeling generous, drop them a note and a few dollars. Imagine giving the gift of sight to someone for only $22!

Happy Easter

....to those of you who have yet to discover the one, true religion, and are thus forced to celebrate on the wrong day. Hope you're enjoying your Peeps, chocolate bunnies, and honey-baked hams.

Now can one of you explain the bunny and egg thing to me?

Economic "Good" News

The talking heads on the TV just can't understand why Americans are such Gloomy Guses. Haven't they read the Wall Street Journal? Bush is doing a wonderful job! After all, he American economy is going great! Stock portfolios have rebounded, corporate profits are at record levels! Why all the sad faces?

Well, this might explain it.

First, corporate profits:

Second, wages:

(If you correct for inflation, the second graph not only becomes flat, it drifts a bit into negative territory.)

Not everyone is sharing in this economic boom. Can you guess who is being left out?

Parallel Lines

Popularity poll results for Bush and Nixon are surprisingly (or not, for some of us) similar. Clinton has been added for comparison (the only one of the three to have actually been impeached.........so far).

Click on the graph to enlarge it.

Simple Math

Do the math:

Nukes or No Nukes: if you were Iran, which would you choose?

Support the Troops

The sixties were well known for protest and anti-war music. The Iraq War is finally beginning to produce significant protest music. WIllie Nelson, the Dixie Chicks, Pink and many other have weighed in against Bush's Folly. Green Day had their say. There have been several "Rock Against Bush" albums. Neil Young has just recorded a very anti-War and anti-Bush album.

I've been trying to find a CD of an old 60s album, "War! War! War!" It was recorded by Country Joe and the Fish, and set the war poems of Robert L. Service to music. Service, a Canadian who wrote mostly of the Yukon, and is best known for his long ballads and story poems, had served in the "Great War" and been quite disillusioned by it. In his introductory poem to the book "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man" he writes:

So here's my sheaf of war-won verse,
And some is bad, and some is worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,
You needn't read that part of it;
For through it all like horror runs
The red resentment of the guns.
And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God's sight
War ever, ever can be right.

Sadly, the album appears to be out of print.

Country Joe MacDonald became well known in the 60s for his anti-war songs, including the anthemic "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag," the refrain of which is

And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

The main stanzas of the song speak of war profiteers, and those who pay the real price of war.

Today I found this cartoon, obviously inspired by Country Joe:

If you poke around Country Joe's website, you'll find this new song of his, Support the Troops:

Beat the drum, wave the flag,
For those who won’t be coming back.
Numbers rising, build another Wall
For those who answered the Country’s call.
Support the troops
Support the troops

Gold Star Mothers, Gold Star Dads
Left with nothing but a folded flag.
Gold Star Brothers, Sisters too
Feel their pain, it could be you!
Support the troops
Support the troops

Some day soon, don’t know when
We’ll see the wounded women and men
Lining the walls of American streets
Hands out begging for something to eat.
Support the troops
Support the troops

Forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
Wondering "What were we fighting for?"
World War III around the bend
That’s what we get with the George Bush Plan.
Support the troops
Support the troops

Chorus:
Chicken hawk, draft dodging, son Of A Bush
Look at all the damage you did!
American war in the Holy Land
Blood for oil, not in my name!
Oh, not in my name
Oh, not in my name
Oh, not in my name
Not in my name
American shame
Not in my name
American shame.

Not in my name, either.

Letter Home

You know best how proud I have been to serve
Thirty years in a tangible way
And to honor my brother's sacrifice
In that rice field an ocean away
But my proud serving days are over
There's no honor in burying men
For those who chose to start this war
But chose not to fight back then

Three boys gave up their lives tonight
And a brave young girl makes it four
We're right back where we started a lifetime ago
In another liar's war

Watch it here!

Play Ball!

This Monday the was opening day of baseball season, at least in Detroit. The Tigers lost to the White Sox, but, otherwise, everything went well––pleasant weather, good crowd, no terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney tried to get some of that baseball magic for themselves. National pastime and all that. Bush, who is polling in the low 30s (the lowest approval rating of any president ever except Nixon during Watergate), threw out the first pitch in Cincinnati last Monday, April 3rd. There was a good bit of booing, but not as much as might be expected. Why? Bush, being the brave man that he is, insulated himself. No, he didn't hide behind Mommy's skirt, but it was almost as bad:

When the President strode to the mound to throw out the first pitch . . . he was accompanied by two injured American soldiers (Mike McNaughton, Afghanistan, and Paul Brondhaver, Iraq) and the father (John Prazynski) of another (Taylor Prazynski) who was killed in action (Afghanistan). If anyone in the capacity crowd had been predisposed to boo George Bush, that notion was dashed by the company the prez was publicly keeping.

It wasn't enough that he ducked DC to pitch in a safely red state, but he didn't go alone. (That sounds a lot like his senate and grand jury testimony--never alone, always with Uncle Dick.) And Bush was so afraid of facing the Washington, DC crowd on opening day there that he sent the VP in his place.

So Cheney, who hasn't polled above 18% in recent memory, left his undisclosed location/underground bunker long enough to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals game.

Vice President Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the home opener of the Washington Nationals game today. The crowd was was less than thrilled to have him there, loudly booing over the Fox News reporter. (Note: Fox producers muted the crowd audio halfway through before letting viewers “listen in” after the pitch.)

Watch it:

Well, at least he didn't hit anyone in the face......

Nuclear War in Iran?

Seymour Hersch has an interesting (and downright scary) article in this week's New Yorker. He states that, not only is the Bush administration preparing for war in Iran (to prevent them from getting nukes, even though they are at least ten years away from producing a nuclear weapon)

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

...Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing—since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.

but that they have no compunction about using nukes in this endeavor

One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites...The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.

...The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior intelligence official said. “ ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”

Once again, Bush's know-nothing non-experts are making the decisions, while those who actually know something about the subject are being marginalized. And we know how well that worked out last time.

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They’re telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation,” he said.

The chairman of the Defense Science Board is William Schneider, Jr., an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. In January, 2001, as President Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on an ad-hoc panel on nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel’s report recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of the U.S. arsenal and noted their suitability “for those occasions when the certain and prompt destruction of high priority targets is essential and beyond the promise of conventional weapons.” Several signers of the report are now prominent members of the Bush Administration, including Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

Read the whole article here.Unless, of course, you want to still be able to sleep nights.

Dear Mr. President

Pink and the Indigo Girls have a song for you.

Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let's pretend we're just two people and you're not better than me
I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly
What do you feel when you see all of the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night when you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror
Are you proud?

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?
And tell me why?

Dear Mr. President
Were you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
How can you say no child is left behind?
We're not dumb and we're not blind!
They're all sitting in your cells
While you pave a road to hell
What kind of father would take his own daughters rights away?
And what kind of father might hate her own daughter if she were gay?
I could only imagine what the first lady has to say
You've come a long way
From whiskey and cocaine!

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?

Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don't know nothing bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Dear Mr. President
You'd never take a walk with me
Would you?


P.S. Oh, by the way, the Dixie Chicks haven't forgiven you and yours yet. They're unapologetic, and not ready to make nice.

El Salvador

There is a great article in the New York Times magazine this weekend about the consequences of the banning of abortion in El Salvador. (Google "Pro-Life Nation" if the link has expired.) The doctors there have to, by law, report any women who come to them for care who may have had an abortion, and they even have "forensic vagina inspectors'" Even worse, there are women, one of whom is the mother of several small children, who have been sentenced to thirty years in jail for the crime of having an abortion.

Their actual crime? Being women and being poor. The rich can jet off to some other country and have an abortion, should they need it. The middle class can usually afford to pay off a doctor to have the procedure done safely. But the poor have to resort to back alley abortions, risking their lives and their future fertility, as well as long jail sentences.

And this policy is carried out to its logical but extreme conclusion––protection of the fetus above and beyond all else. There is not exception for saving the life of the mother:

Julia Regina de Cardenal runs the Yes to Life Foundation in San Salvador, which provides prenatal care and job training to poor pregnant women. She was a key advocate for the passage of the ban. She argued that the existing law's exception for the life of the mother was outdated. As she explained to me, "There does not exist any case in which the life of the mother would be in danger, because technology has advanced so far." De Cardenal was particularly vehement in responding in print to her opponents. As she wrote in one Salvadoran newspaper column in 1997, "The Devil, tireless Prince of Lies, has tried and will continue to try to change our laws in order to kill our babies."

And even non-viable ectopic pregnancies are protected. These are pregnancies in the Fallopian tube that will inevitably fail and, when they do, the mother can bleed to death internally:

A policy that criminalizes all abortions has a flip side. It appears to mandate that the full force of the medical team must tend toward saving the fetus under any circumstances. This notion can lead to some dangerous practices. Consider an ectopic pregnancy, a condition that occurs when a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube — which is no bigger around than a pencil — and gets stuck there (or sometimes in the abdomen). Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.

According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube. "That is our policy," Valdés told me. She was plainly in torment about the subject. "That is the law," she said. "The D.A.'s office told us that this was the law."

The Republic of Gilead......or the future of South Dakota, and perhaps the USA?

Spring Peepers

It's been warming up around here the last few weeks, and tonight I heard the spring peepers calling. Spring is really here.

The nocturnal chorusis not produced by birds or crickets, but by small, thumbnail-sized tree frogs. They perch on grasses and sedges at the edge of ponds or roadside ditches. The males call mates with a shrill "peep peep peep". They are brown or gray color, well camouflaged amid the dead spring grasses. If the night is cold, Peepers retreat under leaves and stems.

Or so the books say. I've heard hundreds of them, but have yet to see one.

Thank You, Harry Taylor

A man went off script at a Bush event on Friday. When called on to ask a question, Harry Taylor had the following exchange with the president:

You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are –

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what’s your question?

Q Okay, I don’t have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I — in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and –

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec — let him speak.

Q And I would hope — I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I’m saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

THE PRESIDENT: It is, yes. (Applause.)

Q And I know that this doesn’t come welcome to most of the people in this room, but I do appreciate that.

THE PRESIDENT: Appreciate –

Q I don’t have a question, but I just wanted to make that comment to you.

Bush's reply was off topic, never addressing anything that Taylor had said.

But it needed saying.

Thank you, Harry Taylor!

The man on the left is Harry Taylor. On the right is a painting by Norman Rockwell extolling America's freedoms. Eerie similarities?

Illegal Immigration

Fiscal Responsibility

U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCKThe Outstanding Public Debt as of 07 Apr 2006 at 02:56:32 PM GMT is:

$8,393,852,501,217.44
The estimated population of the United States is 298,986,071, so each citizen's share of this debt is $28,074.39.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $2.44 billion per day since September 30, 2005!

From the website Wampum (read the whole article), a summation of growth in the national debt since 1960:

Ranking the twelve individual four-year Presidential terms from Kennedy through President Bush's second term by the percentage increase in the national debt (from most debt to least), we get the following:

Reagan I 89.1%
G.H.W. Bush 54.4%
Ford 53%
Reagan II 46.8%
Carter 43.1%
G.W. Bush I 36.6%
G.W. Bush II 32.4%
Nixon 27.7%
Clinton I 22.7%
Johnson 15.0%
Kennedy 8.45%
Clinton II 7.3%

The worst four spots (and seven of the worst eight) are held by Republican Presidents, while the four best spots are held by Democrats. Only one Democrat (Carter) is among the worst eight terms. (Please note that the George W. Bush II term could move to a worse spot in the rankings.)

While all other administrations are ranked according to actual performance, the second Bush term is ranked by his administration's own budget estimates. Those estimates include nothing for the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, assume no fix of the alternative minimum tax, assume discretionary budget cuts that the Senate has already rejected, as well as other questionable assumptions.

All told, our analysis shows that 80% of the national debt has been incurred in years in which Republican Presidents submitted the budget while about 20% happened under budgets submitted by Democrats.

So, if you want balanced budgest and fiscal responsibility, VOTE DEMOCRAT!

Missing Link

So what will the creationists use to "debunk" evolution with, now that scientists have discovered the "missing link"? From the New York Times:

Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375 million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought "missing link" in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.

In addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils are widely seen by scientists as a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who hold a literal biblical view on the origins and development of life.

Several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish were uncovered in sediments of former stream beds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole, it is being reported on Thursday in the journal Nature. The skeletons have the fins and scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long.

But on closer examination, scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but exhibiting changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — a predecessor thus of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans.

The scientists described evidence in the forward fins of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.

The discovering scientists called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, at the suggestion of elders of Canada's Nunavut Territory. Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) means "large shallow water fish."

In two reports in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, the science team led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago wrote, "The origin of limbs probably involved the elaboration and proliferation of features already present in the fins of fish such as Tiktaalik."

Dr. Shubin, an evolutionary biologist, let himself go in an interview. "It's a really amazing remarkable intermediate fossil — it's like, holy cow," he enthused.

Two other paleontologists, commenting on the find in a separate article in the journal, said that a few other transitional fish had been previously discovered from approximately the same Late Devonian time period, 385 million to 359 million years ago. But Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates," they said, that it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles, probably dinosaurs, and today's birds.

The writers, Erik Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden and Jennifer A. Clack of the University of Cambridge in England, are often viewed as rivals to Dr. Shubin's team in the search for intermediate species in the evolution from fish to the first animals to colonize land.

In a statement by the Science Museum of London, where casts of the fossils will be on view, Dr. Clack said the fish "confirms everything we thought and also tells us about the order in which certain changes were made."

H. Richard Lane, director of paleobiology at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement, "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil 'Rosetta Stones' for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone — fish to land-roaming tetrapods."

...While Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in the United States, other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the creationists' argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind.

One creationist Web site (emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid1.htm) declares that "there are no transitional forms," adding: "For example, not a single fossil with part fins part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind."

Dr. Novacek responded in an interview: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?"

Dr. Shubin and Dr. Daeschler began their search on Ellsmere Island in 1999. They were attracted by a map in a geology textbook showing the region had an abundance of Devonian rocks exposed and relatively easy to explore. At that time, the land was part of a supercontinent straddling the equator and had a warm climate.

It was not until July 2004, Dr. Shubin said, that "we hit the jackpot." They found several of the fishes in a quarry, their skeletons largely intact and in three dimensions. The large skull had the sharp teeth of a predator. It was attached to a neck, which allowed the fish the unfishlike ability to swivel its head.

"Fish feeding in water readily orient the mouth toward food by maneuvering the entire body," said Dr. Jenkins, who assisted in the interpretation of the fossils. "The head is rigidly attacked to the trunk by bones linking the skull and shoulder girdle, and thus fish have no neck."

If the animal spent any time out of water, he said, it needed a true neck that allowed the head to move independently on the body.

Embedded in the pectoral fins were bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals. The scientists said the joints of the fins appeared to be capable of functioning for movement on land, a case of a fish improvising with its evolved anatomy. In all likelihood, they said, Tiktaalik flexed its proto-limbs primarily on the floor of streams and may have pulled itself up on the shore for brief stretches.

In their journal report, the scientists concluded that Tiktaalik is an intermediate between the fish Panderichthys, which lived 385 million years ago, and early tetrapods. The known early tetrapods are Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, about 365 million years ago.

Tiktaalik, Dr. Shubin said, is "both fish and tetrapod, which we sometimes call a fishapod."

Sorry for the long post, but NYT articles disappear from the web after two weeks, so linking doesn't work well.

Darwin, once again, was right!

Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead.....

Which old witch? Why....err....Tom Delay!

Hot Tub Tom, the man who never met a lobbyist he couldn't sell out to, has announced he will effectively resign from the House of Representatives, and spend the rest of his life working on behalf of the Christian principles he has always valued so greatly. (Like casino gambling, slave labor, and keeping out of jail?)

Joy reigns throughout Munchkinland the USA!

Odd timing, though. Instead of simply not running for reelection, he ran in the Republican primary, and barely won, but did manage to build up a million dollar war chest. So what will happen to those campaign dollars? Will he give them to his successor, or to his party, to continue to fight the good fight?

According to the Washington Post:

An additional impetus for putting off the resignation until now was suggested by John Feehery, a former aide to DeLay and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "He needed to raise money for the defense fund. That was the bottom line," Feehery said. "He wanted to make sure he could take care of himself in the court of law." Under federal campaign rules, any reelection money a lawmaker raises can be used to pay legal fees stemming from official duties.

So, by some "quirk" of the law, a congressman can spend his campaign funds for legal bills. Odd, that. So it seems that Tom was in a race for dollars, not votes. It could explain the odd lack of advertising......Good old Tom Delay, loyal to the very last....to Tom Delay.

And, until ethics laws are strengthened and enforced (and the right wing political machine voted out), this is just a cosmetic change. I don't think the overlords of Saipan have to worry that their slaves will be getting the minimum wage, or even minimum human rights, any time soon.

Or that corporations will stop writing laws to their own benfit.

Money talks.

Mr. Straight Talk?

I will confess that I voted for John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary in Michigan. Ours is a state that allows cross-over voting, and I did it because I really, truly feared a Bush presidency. (And I was right to do so.)

McCain was conservative, but a reasonable conservative, and a bit of maverick. No more. He is now pandering to the Bush demographic (end-timers and corporatists). For example, take this meeting he had recently:

Sen. John McCain threatened on Tuesday to cut short a speech to union leaders who booed his immigration views and later challenged his statements on organized labor and the Iraq war.

"If you like, I will leave," McCain told the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department, pivoting briefly from the lectern. He returned to the microphone after the crowd quieted.
. . .
Later, the senator outlined his position on the Senate immigration debate, saying tougher border enforcement must be accompanied by guest-worker provisions that give illegal immigrants a legal path toward citizenship.

Murmurs from the crowd turned to booing. "Pay a decent wage!" one audience member shouted.

"I've heard that statement before," McCain said before threatening to leave.
. . .
But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.

McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain's job offer.

"I'll take it!" one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. "You can't do it, my friends."

Some in the crowd said they didn't appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic.

"I was impressed with his comedy routine and ability to tap dance without music. But I was impressed with nothing else about him," said John Wasniewski of Milwaukee. "He's supposed to be Mr. Straight Talk?"

The problem is not that Americans won't do certain jobs, it's that they are not paid enough to do those jobs. There is not a shortage of workers, there is a reluctance on the part of many employers to pay a living wage.

If a reasonable wage were paid, there would be no shortage of farms workers, or workers in any other of those jobs that the Republicans claim "Americans don't want." It's not that Americans don't want the jobs, it's just that they expect to get paid for doing them.

They want to work full time, and be able to support their family on the pay. Is that so unreasonable?

England is our Ally

The following is a post from the Nattering Nabob (April 3, 2006). Needless to say, Condi's tour of ENgland was NOT as smashing success, and as such did NOT get very much press coverage here in the USA.

England is our Ally

Not Bush's ally. Our ally. Blair is Bush's ally. England agrees with us.

Let's recap the gigantic Public Relations triumph that was Condoleezza Rice's trip to England.

Something inside me tells me that I SHOULD feel sorry for her, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't.

Rice went to England as a sort of reciprocation for Jack Straw's visit here (Jack Straw, in case you didn't know, is the British Foreign Secretary who sounds like a character in a nursery rhyme). Straw is Rice's British counterpart, and when he was in the United States, Rice showed him around her hometown of Birmingham. So Straw invited her to England to look around HIS old stomping grounds in Blackburn, Lancashire, England (even though the place had enough holes to fill the Albert Hall). Isn't that nice?

So the first thing Straw did was invite her to a soccer match.

But the team, the Blackburn Rovers, wound up rescheduling the soccer match for the sake of TV revenues. So Straw took Rice on a tour of an empty soccer stadium instead.

Then Straw took her to his old school, Pleckgate High School. Most of the students are Indian and Pakistani, and Straw wanted to show her how diverse they were.

But let us just say that the Indian and Pakistani students were not happy to see Dr. Rice, at all, at all. In fact, they were sort of screaming things.

Things like "Condi, go home!"

And, "Hey, Condi, hey, how many kids did you kill today?"

And "Who let the bombs out?"

Through megaphones.

Since Blackburn is close to Liverpool, Rice thought it would be neat to meet Sir Paul McCartney (who wouldn't?).

But Sir Paul declined the invitation, so poor Condi never got to meet him.

She took a tour of his school instead. And saw a performance at the Paul McCartney Theatre.

And when she got to the Paul McCartney Theatre, the first thing she saw - standing abreast right inside the front door - were six people wearing black T-shirts that said, "No torture. No compromise." With the school director's permission.

Then, in response to a question by the British Press, she tossed out THIS little winner:

"Yes, I know we have made tactical errors, thousands of them, I am sure."

By evening's end she was (ahem) assuring everybody that she was only speaking "figuratively, not literally." Which, I suppose, means that by "thousands," she meant, oh, I don't know, four or something.

Her embarrassing gaffe was preceded by a talk from Douglas Hurd, Maggie Thatcher's Foreign Secretary and Straw's predecessor. In her presence, Hurd said this:

"The world only works if the world's only superpower follows the rules like everyone else."

Of course, Hurd was too polite to say precisely who he was referring to by "the world's only superpower."

On Friday night, they went to a performance by the Liverpool Philharmonic.

The host cancelled his appearance to protest Rice's visit.

One of the performers sang John Lennon's Imagine, and dedicated it to "the protesters outside," and spliced a piece of "Give Peace a Chance" into the song.

Then they decided to visit Masjide al-Hidayah mosque. A fine symbolic gesture.

But the mosque decided that they had had symbolic gestures up to here. They cancelled the visit. They had received many angry phone calls from many angry people threatening to "invade" the mosque should Rice show her face.

So it looks like Rice got an up-close-and-personal view of just what England thinks of Mr. Bush and his policies.

And it seems pretty obvious that they aren't his ally.

They are ours.