The Staton Jones Report

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April 30, 2005

Florida Judge Rules 13 Year-old May Not Abort

Once again, Florida wins the nation's "Most Cruel State" award. A Florida judge ruled that a 13 year old girl, who is a ward of the state, is "too immature" to decide if she can ask for an abortion.

A state court granted an injunction which prevents the girl from terminating her pregnancy.

She is three months pregnant and had planned to have an abortion on Tuesday of this week.

The American Civil Liberties Union says it will launch an urgent appeal against the ruling.

'Too young to chose'

Florida's department of children and families intervened and took the matter to court, arguing the teenager, who is under the care of the state, is too young and immature to make an informed medical decision. Judge Ronald Alvarez in Palm Beach accepted that argument and has granted a temporary injunction and psychological evaluation, which effectively blocks her from terminating the pregnancy.

It is a case which, once again, plays into the heated and divisive debate about abortion in America.

The judge's ruling comes in spite of Florida state law which specifically does not require a minor to seek parental consent before an abortion.

Its executive director in Florida, Howard Simon, said forcing a 13-year-old to carry on an unwanted pregnancy to term, against her wishes, is not only illegal and unconstitutional, it is cruel.

Posted by Steven at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2005

Pentagon Releases Coffin Photos

	Holy shit! Troops really do die in Iraq! the LA Times ran a story today about how the Pentagon, under the FOIA (and against the orders of Dick Cheney) released photos of dead soldier's coffins. What was the rush?

Posted by Steven at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2005

Voters to Bush: Just Say No

What part of NO don't you get, Shrub? Voters are turning away from Bush's agenda in hybrid Droves.

But by a 2 to 1 ratio, the public rejected easing Senate rules in a way that would make it harder for Democratic senators to prevent final action on Bush's nominees. Even many Republicans were reluctant to abandon current Senate confirmation procedures: Nearly half opposed any rule changes, joining eight in 10 Democrats and seven in 10 political independents, the poll found.

The wide-ranging survey also recorded a precipitous decline in support for the centerpiece of Bush's Social Security plan -- private or personal accounts -- despite the fact that the president and other administration officials have been stumping the country in a 60-day blitz to mobilize support. The Post-ABC poll found that a bare majority -- 51 percent -- opposed such accounts, while 45 percent supported them.

The poll also registered drops in key Bush performance ratings, growing pessimism about the economy and continuing concern about U.S. involvement in Iraq.

On the issue that has consumed the capital's political community this spring, four in 10 said that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, under fire for alleged ethics violations, should resign his leadership post, while a third of the public said he should remain in his job. Among the 36 percent who said they have been following the allegations against DeLay, nearly two in three said DeLay should step down.

Taken together, the findings suggest that Bush is off to a difficult start in his second term, with Democrats far less willing to accommodate him and his agenda than his reelection victory last November may have foreshadowed. Beyond that, the survey highlights the divisions within the Republican Party, whether that involves Bush's signature Social Security proposal or the intersection of religion and politics that has become a defining characteristic of today's GOP.

A total of 1,007 randomly selected adults were interviewed by telephone April 21-24 for this Post-ABC News poll. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus three percentage points.

The survey found that Bush's overall job approval rating stood at 47 percent, matching his all-time low in Post-ABC News polls. Half disapproved of the job he is doing as president.

Posted by Steven at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

Congress Running Scared

Who watches the watchers? Congresscritters are scrambling to clean their files of incriminating memos, receipts and paperwork now that the DeLay fiasco is showing signs of spreading to others.

Members of Congress are rushing to amend their travel and campaign records, fearing that the controversy over House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will trigger an ethics war that will bring greater scrutiny to their own travel and official activities.

Some offices have sharply limited staff travel, and some members are not traveling at all because of the intense review they believe they will face in coming months.

Lawmakers are paying old restaurant bills, filing missing forms and correcting erroneous ones as journalists and political opponents comb through records and DeLay (R-Tex.) attempts to answer questions about travel financing and his past relationships with lobbyists.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wrote to the Federal Election Commission on April 15 to report that he had discovered that the Washington restaurant Signatures had not charged his credit card -- as he said he had directed -- for a 2003 fundraiser for 16 people that cost $1,846. The event was hosted by Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist and part-owner of the restaurant who is now under congressional and criminal investigation for his handling of millions of dollars in fees from Indian tribes. Abramoff was not at the event.

"I never thought about this event again until it was brought to my attention very recently that no payment or reimbursement for the event has ever appeared on our FEC report," Vitter wrote. He wrote to Signatures at the same time, directing the management to "charge my credit card today."

Scurry little rats! The audit is coming! The audit is coming!

Posted by Steven at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

Saudis Leave Bush Hanging

Who's the beotch in this picture? Shrub made Saudi Prince Abdullah fly all the way to Waco, Texas just to tell him what a simple phone call would have accomplished: we're not lowering the price of oil. It turns out that the 1.5 M bbl. of oil the Saudis have "in reserves" is heavy crude, which few buyers want because it is expensive to refine into gasoline. In other words, the Saudis are tapped out on production. There will be no saving Bush on fuel prices from these guys.

Bush has pressed the Saudis in recent weeks to help lower gasoline prices soon by increasing crude oil production, but Abdullah and his delegation responded here by explaining their long-term strategy to invest $50 billion over five years in a plan that would eventually increase the kingdom's oil production capacity by close to 50 percent.

The meeting at Bush's ranch came amid increasing concern about spiraling gasoline prices, which are helping to push the president's approval ratings to new lows. It also came as Saudi officials are seeking to further repair their relationship with the United States, which was badly damaged after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Fifteen of the 19 suspected terrorists were Saudi citizens.

Crude prices have been rising because increasing demand, particularly in the exploding economies of China and India, has pushed the world's ability to produce oil to its limits.

In previous years, Saudi Arabia, which has about a quarter of the world's oil reserves, had enough spare capacity to increase production significantly when demand spiked. But now the Saudis have little additional capacity, making oil markets jittery. Markets are concerned that a terrorist attack or other significant supply disruption could result in a shortage because of that lack of ability to make up for lost production.

Posted by Steven at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2005

Privatize This!

Posted by Steven at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)

Putin Misses Real Dictatorship

Russia: We'll be a dictatorship again. Soon. Vladmir Putin "misses the USSR". He's also George Bush's good buddy in Russia!

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.

Mr Putin's annual state of the nation address to parliament was broadcast live on Russian television.

He said the break-up of the USSR in 1991 was "a real drama" which left tens of millions of Russians outside the Russian Federation.

He also said Russia must develop as a "free and democratic" country.

But he stressed that Russia "will decide for itself the pace, terms and conditions of moving towards democracy".

I guess he and Bush both miss the glory days of dictatorship and are working ever closer to reviving them. I wonder what Putin really thinks a democracy looks like (perhaps where the GOP is taking America?).

Posted by Steven at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

Rope-a-Dope

Nice article on Harry Reid's strategy of not getting in the way of the GOP destroying itself:

President George W. Bush started 2005 in triumph, with lofty poll numbers, sweeping goals, a tightened grip on both houses of Congress and a united Republican Party. Now those numbers are falling, his domestic programs are in trouble and the GOP is increasingly divided and wary of igniting an Armageddon-like confrontation with the Democrats over rules by which the Senate votes on presidential nominees for the federal bench. "Some of our guys are getting a little bit nervous," said a GOP strategist with close ties to Bush. "And with good reason."

Reid, with 37 years in politics, is prospering partly by doing what shrewd boxers do in the early rounds to survive: let the other guy overreach. Proudly unphilosophical, he thinks the Democratic Party needs no soul-searching. "I believe in simplicity," he says. "Health care, pensions, energy independence—that's my agenda." Meanwhile, he's glad to watch the president travel the country, attempting to sell his theory of Social Security personal savings accounts. "The more he talks about it, the less popular it gets," Reid says.

Posted by at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2005

The Democrat's New Ally

Posted by at 11:33 AM | Comments (3)

April 23, 2005

See The Original!

Just to piss off Skates.

You sick little monkey! -- Skates

Posted by at 10:04 AM | Comments (1)

April 21, 2005

Ratzinger Put Bush in the WH

The new Pope is no stranger to politicizing religion. Salon has an essay by Sidney Blumenthal that re-highlights the connection between Ratzinger and Bush in the last election cycle.

President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.

About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" -- an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with "evil."

In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of the Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.

So now we have a former Nazi telling priests to denounce the actual war hero from the pulpit so that a rich poseur could take the mantle of the Presidency in the name of Christ? Which chapter of Illuminatus! are we in, again?

Read the whole essay -- it's quite disturbing, especially if you are Catholic.

Posted by Steven at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

The Other Suicidal Move in the Software Business

And no, it's not about IBM this time. Through the latter half of my career in software, "Don't piss off Microsoft" has been a truism. They will buy you, crush you, or just sue you out of existance. Not a good move, businesswise.

Well, it turns out there's another truism forming out of the void, Don't Piss Off The Open Source Community. Linus Torvalds is leading an effort to rewrite BitKeeper after the publisher revoked a license clause allowing open source developers a free copy.

A dispute between a prominent open-source developer and the maker of the software used to manage Linux kernel development has forced Linux creator Linus Torvalds to embark on a new software project of his own, in addition to the Linux kernel. The new effort, called "git," was started last week after a licensing dispute forced Torvalds to abandon the proprietary BitKeeper software he had been using to manage Linux kernel development since 2002.

The conflict touches on the difference between open-source developers who view Linux's open, collaborative approach as a technically superior way to build software and free software advocates, who see the ability to access and change source code as fundamental freedom.

As a result of the dispute, Torvalds is now working with other Linux developers to create software that will be able to quickly make changes to 17,000 files that make up the Linux kernel, the central component of the Linux operating system. "Git, to some degree, was designed on the principle that everything you ever do on a daily basis should take less than a second," Torvalds said in an e-mail interview.

The Linux developers will use git to replace BitKeeper, which is developed by BitMover Inc., based in South San Francisco, California.

Though BitMover allowed Linux developers to use a free version of its software for kernel development, the company was unhappy with efforts by developer Andrew Tridgell to develop an open source version of the BitKeeper client. In February, Tridgell wrote a tool that could work with source code stored in BitKeeper, and after several months of negotiations, BitMover decided to revoke the Linux developers' right to use the current BitKeeper software for free.

I'll translate for the technically challenged.

Linus, the guy who controls the Linux operating system kernel (he wrote the early versions and it's named for him), decided in 2002 to use a commerical program to manage the source code of the kernel, which is all the information used to create the massive program. In exchange for getting a huge new market, the publisher allowed OSS developers a side-license (for free) to use the program. One of these programmers took it upon himself to reverse engineer the program and offer his own version of the "client side" -- the program end-users actually ran.

A short history lesson. Andrew Tidgwell is already famous for reverse engineering another program and offering a Linux/Unix version, quite to the horror of the program's publisher. He created a system called SAMBA which allows Linux/Unix and other OS users to access Microsoft Windows Servers. Yeah, Andrew took on Microsoft -- and won.

BitMover is dead meat and doesn't even realize it.

So the publisher thinks it will get all these OSS developers to pay for the product? No chance! Within weeks, there will be a replacement program that will eventually eat their market alive, and it will cost exactly nothing to buy. The original firm will either go out of business, or (irony of ironies) turn into a support firm for the free version. This is like sacking a city and making the original rulers clean the toilets, all because a free room upgrade was denied at the city's best hotel.

Just desserts.

But Linus should learn from this too -- and never, ever choose a commercial package to manage any part of a free program, least of all, Linux itself.

Posted by Steven at 02:57 PM | Comments (1)

The Real Bush Social Security Agenda

Fill the tax cut hole with the Social Security surplus. John Snow spoke today at the Bond Market Association, and made comments that elude to a solution for the deficit caused by Bush's tax cut for the rich.

In remarks yesterday before the Bond Market Association -- one of the hardest partying groups on the street -- Treasury Secretary John Snow explicitly linked the administration's efforts to cut the deficit to the push to partially phase-out Social Security. The logic of that statement points to only one conclusion: the deficits the administration has run up with upper-income tax cuts will be reduced by benefit cuts in Social Security.

It's not about strengthening Social Security; it's about cleaning up the mess created by the president's tax cuts.

Those Bastards! They killed Social Security to pay for their tax cut!

Posted by Steven at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

Rip Van Greenspan

Well, it looks like the old man has woken up from his stupor just as the house is becoming engulfed in flames:

Greenspan: U.S. deficits imperil economy

WASHINGTON - Bloated budget deficits pose a danger to the nation’s long-term economic health, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned anew Thursday. He issued a fresh call to policy-makers to move swiftly to put the government’s fiscal house in order.

The obvious answer to this problem is to cut taxes! Wait a minute....wouldn't that actually make the problem worse?

Posted by at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

A Billboard is Worth 1000 Blogs

Democracy for America, an anti-DeLay PAC, recently held a vote (how democratic of them!) to choose a billboard design to put up in Tom DeLay's district in Houston. Here's the winner:

Democracy for America are currently soliciting donations to fund the billboard campaign. On NPR this morning, they were interviewing Texans, few of which had even heard there was a problem. DeLay is skating on the ignorance instilled by Fox News. Like the millions of cockroaches that he's killed, DeLay will run for cover the moment someone shines light on him.

Posted by at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

An Appeal by John Kerry

Political Civil War is about to break out in D.C. John Kerry sent a video message to his supporters today urging them to get into the trenches and start the war against the Right Wing takeover of the Senate.

Posted by Steven at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2005

A "Person of Pander"

The Party that panders together, stays together. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post offers a simple and clear opinion of Senator Frist, who seeks the GOP nomination in 2008: a person of pander.

"The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith," the telecast's sponsoring organization has declared. Among the participants are some, if not all, who believe that any abortion is wrong, that a stem cell is an inviolate human life, that homosexuality is a sin, that sex before marriage is both a mistake and a sin (don't even ask about homosexual sex before marriage), and that the rights of both Terri Schiavo and her husband should have been brushed aside -- along with a couple of hundred years of allowing state courts to settle such matters.

I am pausing now to wonder if the phrase "people of faith" is meant to include Muslims with several wives, Hindus with several deities or even the odd person here and there who believes, as I am sometimes tempted to, that God can be found in a pint of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. But I think somehow that "people of faith" is meant to embrace only conservative Christians and maybe Orthodox Jews, who are sometimes lumped together as Judeo-Christians. People of faith, you may rest assured, are people of their faith. All others need not apply.

I don't think a gay Presbyterian would be considered a person of faith, no matter how devout, nor, for that matter, a pro-choice Methodist -- say, someone such as Hillary Clinton. The category would certainly not include a Baptist such as Husband Bill or a Jew such as Chuck Schumer or, I venture to say, an Episcopalian such as John McCain, whose faith sustained him in a Vietnamese prison. As for a Roman Catholic such as Ted Kennedy, whose faith informs his liberalism, take it on faith that he would not be considered a person of faith. The phrase would also exclude anyone of any faith who believes in a limited role for religion in public life, especially the schools, if only on the pragmatic grounds that otherwise we will be at each other's throats. This is a lesson of history.

The invocation of the phrase "people of" is no different when preceding "faith" than it is when preceding "color." It's a bold signal of mushy thinking, a corralling of people who have nothing in common other than a perceived -- and often fictionalized -- enemy. "People of faith" mischaracterizes what the political debate is all about. What Senate Democrats lack is not faith but 50 votes. Frist knows this, of course, but his mad pursuit of the presidency requires him to prove to the Christian right, the core of the Republican Party, that its cause comes before his principles.

He did this with Terri Schiavo, going so far as to use his medical bona fides (he's a heart surgeon) to view a neurologist's videotape of the poor woman and pronounce her somewhat alert. Now he is lending his name and his fast-diminishing prestige to this reprehensible effort to enlist faith on the side of a single political issue. This sort of stuff will not, as he hopes, make him the next president of the United States. Instead, it shows what raw ambition has made him: a person of pander.

Posted by Steven at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

4/20

What?

Oh! Dude, it's 4/20. You know what that means. It's like... wait. Dude.

Hold on a minute, this post was going to be about something. No, no, no, don't tell me, I'll remember. It's about... no... oh yeah! I was at Taco Bell yesterday and I saw this, like, really fat guy, and he was, like, ordering a lot of tacos and I'm all, man, are you gonna eat all those tacos, 'cause you should be, like... y'know... on a diet or something.

What? Oh, am I posting? Oh shit, man, I totally forgot I was typing this in. That's soooo funny.

So. What's new? I'm just hangin'. Just postin'. Oh, shit! My post.

Yeah, so something's happening today. It's the Pope or something... damn.

I'll remember it later.

Hey, you going to Taco Bell?

Posted by at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2005

Pope Benedict

And in this corner, representing the 17th century ... The College of Cardinals picked Ratzinger to be the first new Pope of the 21st century. Fortunately for conservative Catholics, he's upholding all the traditions of the 17th century. So much for a progressive Catholic Church ...

As a cardinal, Ratzinger was a close associate of John Paul and dean of the College of Cardinals, and known for his strict support of church doctrine. On Monday, he delivered a passionate defense of orthodoxy at a pre-conclave Mass attended by the cardinals.

Since 1981, Ratzinger was head of the Vatican's influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he played a leading role disciplining dissidents and resisting liberal proposals for change.

Ratzinger was elected on the second day of voting. The announcement was made by Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez of Chile, the senior cardinal deacon, before thousands of cheering spectators in St. Peter's Square.

Sigh. Just what Earth needs, another hard ass old man in charge. God help the poor and God help women -- the Church certainly won't.

Oh ... just read that Ratzinger wanted to deny John Kerry communion ... so that puts him squarely in the crowd who are politicizing religion. He joins Tom DeLay, President Bush and Pat Robertson on the first day ... nice shoot'n, Tex.

Posted by Steven at 02:09 PM | Comments (1)

April 18, 2005

Vegetable Purée

This is making the rounds in email. It's a nice summary of Schiavo debacle, so I thought I'd post here:

What we learned from the Schiavo mess:

1. Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, and Tom Delay are all world renowned neurologists.
   
2. 22 successive court battles that all ended in exactly the same way means there is something wrong with the courts, not the Schindler's case.
   
3. Mike is after money which is why he turned down 1 million dollars and 10 million dollars to sign over guardianship.
   
4. Congress and the State Legislature of Florida has nothing better to do than pry into the private medical affairs of others.
   
5. Pulling life support is bad in Florida when authorized by the legal next-of-kin, but pulling life support is good in Texas when you run out of money and the mother pleads not to pull the plug on her baby.
   
6. Medical diagnoses are best performed by watching highly edited videotape made by Randall Terry rather than in person by trained physicians.
   
7. Minimum wage making nursing assistants are more qualified to diagnose a persistent vegetative state than experienced neurologists.
   
8. Cerebral spinal fluid is a magical potion that can mimic the entire functions of a missing cerebral cortex.
   
9. 15 years in the same persistent state is not really enough time to make an accurate diagnosis.
   
10. A feeding tube that infuses yellow nutritional goop is not really "life support".
    
11. Jesus was wrong when he said that a man and woman should leave their parents and cleave only to each other.
    
12. Marriage is the most sacred of all unions, except when it isn't.
    
13. Interfering in a family's private tragedy is a great reason to cut short a vacation, but getting a memo that warns a known terrorist is determine to strike inside the US is cause to relax and finish up some R&R.
    
14. Pro-lifers are really compassionate people; which is why they are hoping that Michael Schiavo dies a horrible painful death.
    
15. The Supreme Court of the United States and the State Supreme Court of Florida mean "Maybe" when they are saying "No!".
    
16. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a bleeding heart liberal.
    
17. 7 Supreme Court Justices were appointed by republican presidents, so it's Clinton's fault.
    
18. A judge who makes rulings based on the law is obviously an atheist, liberal, democratic activist even though he is a conservative, republican, Southern Baptist.
    

Posted by at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2005

The Inevitable

We've been wondering when rising gas prices would impact the SUV market.

After downplaying the impact of rising gas prices for months, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. now acknowledge they're losing sales.

Read the details here.

All I have to say is, "Ha fucking ha!" Remember when you see someone driving in a Hummer: point and laugh!

Posted by at 11:29 AM | Comments (1)

Citibank Helps Customers With Offshore Banking

Sixteen Citibank employees helped customers move their money into offshore accounts... without their permission.

Several times a week, I receive scam email from some supposed Nigerian official appealing for my help moving millions of dollars out of his country. These offers can be fun to answer (this one is really good), but only an idiot would actually give their personal banking details to an unidentified stranger from a foreign land. Well, only an idiot or a Citibank customer.

In the latest episode of "why offshoring is an ill-conceived idea," sixteen phone-support workers in Pune, India, helped themselves to $350,000 worth of Citibank customers' money. These guys were stoopid amateurs and transferred the cash into their own accounts. Since they netted 20-30 times their annual salaries, you'd think that this would be a pretty attractive scam for other offshore phone operators to attempt. The question is, will they get caught?

This begs the question: why would domenstic call-center personnel be any less suspect? Simply put, most Americans, particularly the ones who get call-center jobs, can't name a foreign country, much less find one. Most likely, they would transfer the money to a U.S. account, leaving a paper-trail you could see from space. Had the Indian theives been a little smarter, they could have seen to it that the stolen funds vanished untracably into fog of corrupt foreign banking and law enforcement.

Posted by at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2005

Wall Street Suffers Worst Day in Two Years

It's not a crash, it's more like the sound of air leaking out of our inflatable reality.

Details from AP Newswire.

I don't have much else to say except, I wish there had been a fair vote count in Ohio.

Posted by at 06:40 PM | Comments (1)

Oil is Thicker Than Water

Actually, oil is thinner than water, but it does seem to tie the scummiest people together in the scummiest ways. And you can't get scummier than the Bush family, Don Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney, in this regard.

Mention oil scandal amongst the neo-conned Freepers and they'll start reflexively yelping, "Oil for food! Oil for food!"

Indeed, this allows the brainless twits to heap dirt on two of their favortite targets, the U.N. and its head, Kofi Annan. Although everyone who's ever walked the halls of the U.N. is tarred with guilt, you don't hear much about the oil companies that were in the middle of it. U.N staff are attacked for allegedly taking bribes to "look the other way," but it was the oil traders who actually paid the hundreds of millions in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, himself.

Well all that changed today with the arrest of David Bay Chalmers, Jr.. Chalmers, is a multi-billionaire who inherited the fortune created by his father's Coral Petroleum. He's not someone you'd have ever heard of unless you were in the oil industry, as he's kept a pretty low profile over the years. That was a wise move because he's a royal scumbag.

If you visit FreeRepublic and search for "Chalmers," you'll get no results. The reason for this is that Chalmers makes a bad Freeper poster-boy for the Oil-For-Food scandal. ( Whatever you do, don't search on "Schiavo," as loading the results page might crash your browser.)

First things first: David Chalmers is a rich white oil man from Houston, and rich white oil men from Houston generally get a "pass" from the Freepers, even when they do really terrible things. We're talking things like — say — dismantling two centuries of American progress.

Another thing is that Chalmers' company, Bay Oil, got into the scandal in October of 2000, so it didn't really operate under the villified Clinton Adminsitration. No, it conducted the majority of its dirty dealings under the watchful eyes of the Bush Adminsitration. While we're expected to believe that the Clintonistas deliberately ignored the scandal, we'll, no doubt, be expected to believe that Bush's crew had no knowledge of the activities of an obscure Houston oil magnate. After all, the Bush Administration had its hands full ignoring Osama Bin Laden and cozying up to the Taliban.

That's a nice story, but key figures in the Bush Administration are veterans of ignoring the obvious, especially when it comes to Saddam Hussein. For example, they keep a straight face when claiming that America didn't arm Hussein. Of course, they covered their tracks pretty well in this regard; although the money trail leads straight to Pappy Bush, the actual weapons Saddam used came from non-American dealers and were non-American products. This also helped get around "official" arms embargoes.

Case in point, the January 30, 1995 issue of Forbes magazine chronicles Saddam's acquisition of weapons from Chilean arms merchant, Carlos Cardoen. Because Iraq was low on cash, Cardoen was paid in oil. Since Cardoen doesn't deal directly in oil, he needed a broker to move the oil, sell it and convert the commodity into cash.

David B. Chalmers and Bay Oil were paid $2 a barrell to broker the trade.

Hmmmmm.

This story is still developing, but if David B. Chalmers hasn't taken tea with Rummy, Cheney, or that guy right down the street, George H. W. Bush, I'll eat my steel-toed boots. Every day, it becomes clearer the Iraq adventure is little more than a money-making scam perpetrated by its most visible beneficiaries (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld). I'm starting to think that it's impossible to be too cynical about these guys.

And note to Freepers: next time you decide to jump on a juicy anti-left scandal, you should probably make certain that it doesn't involve oil, 'cause that's likely to come back to the home team.

Posted by at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)

Texas School District Takes it up the Ass

Don't Whisper, Don't Get Sued. Aren't whisper campaigns a wonder to behold? Like, the one in Bloomburg, TX. A HS basketball coach who happens to be a lesbian took her team to champion status. Her reward, she got sacked after a whisper campaign began to discredit her.

Then she did the unthinkable (in the Red States) -- she fought back. She sued and won $100K in pay in exchange for not suing more. My guess is that Bloomburg, TX is about to get a LOT of bad press, which will cost even more than the $100K.

Moral of the story? Don't participate in a whisper campaign unless you want your taxes to go up.

Posted by Steven at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

A Piece Of The IT Pie

Which is, of course, getting smaller. Troubled by the IT industry? Particularly because you work there? So is Pat Helland, who worked for Microsoft for a long time (and apparently is doing OK with Amazon, but I didn't thoroughly scrutinize his blog). So he wrote these lyrics, set to Don McLean's American Pie. Or you can watch the video (click on the picture, Windows Media). And maybe, for a few minutes, you'll smile rather than weep.

Posted by at 02:40 AM | Comments (1)

April 14, 2005

American Jihad

Gentlemen, start your jihads! Bill Frist is joining other "prominent Christian conservatives" in declaring Democrats "against people of faith" for blocking Bush's extreme, activist judicial nominees.

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Organizers say they hope to reach more than a million people by distributing the telecast to churches around the country, over the Internet and over Christian television and radio networks and stations.

Dr. Frist's spokesman said the senator's speech in the telecast would reflect his previous remarks on judicial appointments. In the past he has consistently balanced a determination "not to yield" on the president's nominees with appeals to the Democrats for compromise. He has distanced himself from the statements of others like the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who have attacked the courts, saying they are too liberal, "run amok" or are hostile to Christianity.

The telecast, however, will put Dr. Frist in a very different context. Asked about Dr. Frist's participation in an event describing the filibuster "as against people of faith," his spokesman, Bob Stevenson, did not answer the question directly.

"Senator Frist is doing everything he can to ensure judicial nominees are treated fairly and that every senator has the opportunity to give the president their advice and consent through an up or down vote," Mr. Stevenson said, adding, "He has spoken to groups all across the nation to press that point, and as long as a minority of Democrats continue to block a vote, he will continue to do so."

Some of the nation's most influential evangelical Protestants are participating in the teleconference in Louisville, including Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Chuck Colson, the born-again Watergate figure and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries; and Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The event is taking place as Democrats and Republicans alike are escalating their public relations campaigns in anticipation of an imminent confrontation. The Democratic minority has blocked confirmation of 10 of President Bush's judicial nominees by preventing Republicans from gaining the 60 votes needed to close debate, using the filibuster tactic often used by political minorities and most notoriously employed by opponents of civil rights.

So the GOP is now openly saying that Democrats are anti-Christian because they didn't support an open attack on the Constitution by religious fundamentalists? Sectarian war has broken out in the Congress, and I fear for my nation now. This can only go downhill, fast.

Posted by Steven at 11:13 PM | Comments (2)

Living Will (Sample, Red State)

From an old friend now a Rabbi in San Francisco.

I, _________________(fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.

Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerwood ethically challenged politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.

If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cold beer, it should be presumed that I won't ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.

Under no circumstances shall the hypocritical members of the Legislature (State or Federal) enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren't in a permanent coma.

Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case.

I don't care how many fundamentalist votes they're trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else's life and leave me alone to die in peace.

I couldn't care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don't know these people, and I certainly haven't authorized them to preach and crusade on my behalf.They should mind their own business, too.

If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.

________________________________ DATE__________
Signature

________________________________ DATE__________
Witness

Posted by Steven at 05:03 PM | Comments (2)

Shocking Artwork in Chicago!

From the Associated Press:

An artwork containing mock 37-cent stamps showing President Bush with a revolver pointed at his head is part of an exhibit at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery titled "Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin" Tuesday, April, 12, 2005 in Chicago. The exhibit captured the attention of the Secret Service who sent agents to inspect the works last week, according to gallery officials.

The SJR is shocked, Shocked! What a terrible affront to President Bush. Can you imagine someone though that the image below was worthy of display?

Posted by at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

Top 10 "Bush in 30 Years" Ads

Most Americans have the attention span of a flea with a head injury, so if you need to inform them, cartoon format works best.

From over 140,000 entries, Moveon.org has culled the the top 10 ads from the crop. I voted on the Top 50, and these are pretty much in line with my choices, although there were some really good ads that didn't make the final 10.

Go view them. Send your friends the link. Enjoy.

Posted by at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2005

Andrea Dworkin is Dead

A classic example of ill bedfellows, if ever. Andrea Dworkin died on Sunday. I saw her speak at RPI in 1984. She was ascendant at the time, and her message was rubbing all the wrong people the right way. She was essentially a kook and a loner whose Messianic zeal made her ideal for the anti-porn Christians to use as a tool, and they did. Her message was simply that sexual intercourse was always equivalent to rape, and it should be banned. After a few decades of this, the human species would be extinct -- great plan.

Susie Bright wrote a very good eulogy that I recommend if you want to understand this woman's impact on our culture.

Posted by Steven at 08:52 AM | Comments (2)

April 12, 2005

Disproving Lincoln

Just repeat until enough people agree, mainly to shut you up. For a party that proudly claims Lincoln as an icon (despite having nothing meaningful to do with that great man except the "Republican" label), they sure don't pay attention to his well-known (if usually slightly misquoted) aphorism, "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time." Karl Rove is the latest to try and disprove the conclusion, as he once again got out the message, this time to a business-oriented site. He doesn't add a damn thing to the discourse, naturally, but rehashing this stuff to the faithful is always good for filler.

Private accounts must be part of any permanent Social Security fix, said Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, expressing optimism Congress will end a partisan standoff and pass such a measure this year.

Read the whole thing if you want, but nowhere does Rove detail why private accounts must be included. But, then, faith is built on belief, not evidence.

"The personal retirement account has to be part of the long- term solution,'' Rove, Bush's chief political and policy adviser, said in an interview in Washington yesterday. "The public and Congress are becoming aware that it's a serious problem.''

No, Karl, the public is being told it's a serious problem, and even the Social Security Administration is being co-opted into spewing the political spin. There's lots of ways in which SS can be tweaked to keep it going, but that's not what the GOP wants. They want it demolished. End. Of. Story.

Bush wants Congress to pass legislation allowing workers younger than 55 to invest in stocks and bonds as much as a third of the 12.4 percent tax they and their employers pay into the Social Security program. Bush and Republican congressional leaders acknowledge that it's politically impossible to pass sweeping legislation without some bipartisan support.

Remember that the GOP controls the Senate, the House, and the White House; they probably could do it, but SS remains the Third Rail of American politics, and 2006 isn't that far off. They only need some Dem support so they can use "bipartisan support" as a shield during the next two election cycles.

Almost all Democrats have rejected accounts created with a portion of Social Security funds. The only Democrat to back a personal account is Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat. And lately, congressional Republicans have indicated they're skittish about private accounts.

Democrats, under new leader Harry Reid, have been very solid on this issue, as they should be. Social Security is one of the most enduring crown jewels in the party's history, and the most popular (and cost-effective) government program ever. Any Dem who strays should be utterly, totally abandoned during his or her next primary season. That some Repugs (actually many, but remember that 82% of people polled thought the federal government should butt out of the Terri Schiavo matter meant the country was "divided", so spin-controlling is very much in fashion these days) don't want to get near this is indicative both of the Third Rail recognition and, to a lesser but still real degree, acknowledgement that the entire Bush concept (it's still not yet a plan) stinks to high heaven.

Some Republican leaders, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa, also have sounded pessimistic about the prospects for Social Security overhaul this year. One bipartisan worry: Private accounts would add to the federal budget deficit, at least in the short term.

Let's run the popular figure again: this disastrous concept, if executed, would require an additional two trillion dollars, give or take a few, to realize. More proof that the GOP's claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility are purest bullshit. The government is at the point where billions are no big deal, but trillions -- yeah, that still commands attention.

Rove denied that Republican apprehension was any cause for serious concern. "This is a big issue,'' he said. "It's a big fundamental reform. It's vital to the country, and nothing ever comes easy.'' He pointed to initial reluctance in Congress to pass Bush's tax cuts, an education bill and a resolution authorizing the U.S. to invade Iraq.

Too funny, Karl. Aside from again dodging putting forth any rationale for the need to tank SS, the three examples he cites are pathetic. The tax cuts have yet to show any meaningful impact on stimulating the economy at large; the education bill (Every Child Left Behind) is federally unfunded and putting painful strain on state education programs; and Iraq -- well, really, Iraq has reached the point, rarified but possible in popular culture, that it resonates the full spectrum of a situation, part and parcel, neutral to bad to worst, with the barest mention of the word. "Iraq." Total, unconditional screwup.

(Lest anyone think I'm condemning the troops serving there, not so. My thoughts for them run directly to, and stop at, "come home safely". The authors of "Iraq" should hang, though.)

Rove suggested that a middle ground, preferred by Democratic Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon, that includes adding private accounts created with funds outside the Social Security program, isn't acceptable as a long-term solution.

Of course not. Nothing short of total capitulation to the Bush agenda is permitted. Kneel, dogs!

"We've already got add-ons; they're called IRAs and 401(k)s,'' Rove said. "What we face is, we need to do something for the working man who's living from paycheck to paycheck and doesn't have extra money to put aside for retirement. That's the person for whom a personal retirement account is most important and most vital.''

Then give these people some real fucking tax relief, Karl. You like tax cuts, don't you? The dribble they got in the 2001 and 2003 No Billionaire Left Behind cut-fest was negligible, and the increases in fuel costs (how's that domestic energy policy working out?) have long since eaten up any measurable gains.

Rove doesn't give a shit about these people, though. Not unless he somehow needs to scoop up their votes (in districts where Diebold machines aren't used) again sometime.

Bush has offered few limits on the scope of the debate, and lawmakers such as Graham who've advocated raising the $90,000 limit on income taxed to fund Social Security shouldn't be chided for such suggestions, Rove said.

Oh God yes, Bush wants a debate! He and his flunkies are out there, selling their 60 Complacent Crowds In 60 Days talking points, and finding no buyers. And the Dems (keep it up!) aren't countering; they're letting the GOP twist in the wind. Bush has not offered his "plan" yet, but he wants the Dems to counteroffer -- and they won't, because they don't need to. Bush doesn't want to frame this one, doesn't want to send the opening salvo, because it's a loser, and they know it, and cratering this top agenda item will likely cripple the rest of the adminstration's term. Bring it on.

"The president has said he's going to provide cover for anybody who want to discuss the issues and people have a right to discuss them,'' Rove said.

That's nice. Who cares? Who's still stupid enough to believe this? Bush likes nothing better than to make nice, then turn, stab, and twist the knife at the first opportunity. His word is worth its weight in vacuum.

I hope I outlive some of these wretched fractions of men just so I can piss on selected graves.

Still waiting for one, just one, example of a historical Karl-with-a-K whom is looked back upon with some measure of fondness from any significant portion of humanity.

Posted by at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2005

Fire Up The Ol' Hummer!

Ouch. That's gotta hurt.

(From the San Francisco Chronicle)

Posted by at 02:38 PM | Comments (1)

Christian Reconstructionism

This is your country on Fundamentalism. Salon is publishing a story on a movement to replace civil rights law with Biblical Law (first question: which Bible? second question: which set of rules?).

According to David Gibbs, the attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents, Terri sobbed in her mother's arms after the courts condemned her to death. "Terri Schiavo was as alive as any person sitting here," he said. "Anything you saw on the videos, multiply times two hundred. I mean completely animated, completely responsive, desperately trying to talk." Schiavo, said Gibbs, would struggle to repeat the word "love" after her mother, and managed to get out something like "loooo."

Gibbs was speaking to a banquet of religious right activists and conservative operatives last Thursday, the first night of the Confronting the Judicial War on Faith conference in Washington. The 100 or so people in the audience had converged on the Washington Marriott from 25 states. Many cried as they listened.

"America needs a healing," Gibbs said, and the crowd murmured its assent. "We're sitting here desperately as a nation needing to adopt the heart of God … We're on the eve of a real major decision. Are we going to do it God's way, or are we going to head down the path of whatever these judges think is best? Terri was alive. The courts killed her. The courts killed her in a barbaric fashion. Others are already facing and will face a similar fate if we don't do something."
...
Having won control of two branches of the federal government, the activists of the religious right have come to see the courts as the intolerable obstacle thwarting their dream of a reborn Christian nation. They believe in a revisionist history, taught in Christian schools and spread through Christian media, which claims biblical law as the source of the Constitution. Thus any ruling that contradicts their theology seems to them to be de facto unconstitutional, and its enforcement tyrannical.

Some believe that the problem can be rectified by replacing liberal judges with conservative ones. Others, noting that even judges appointed by Republicans often rule against them, have become convinced that they must destroy the federal judiciary itself. Thus, ideas offered at the conference ranged from ending the filibuster and impeaching all but the most right-wing judges to abolishing all federal courts below the Supreme Court altogether. At least one panelist dropped coy hints about murder.

I think the Muslims call this Sharia law, but whatever we call it, sectarian law is never, ever a good idea. The rules are always arbitrary, and often intolerably cruel by modern standards. I for one don't want to see a single wife or daugther murdered by the State in the name of God by "Culture of Life" fundamentalists for the crime of being raped. Leave that to the Saudis and the Taliban.

There is a phrase that was abused in the sixties but which I think applies, in a whole new light, here. America, love it or leave it. If you want religious law, go to the Middle East, and suffer the consequences.

Posted by Steven at 01:14 PM | Comments (2)

The True Face of Conservatism

In my monitoring of Free Republic, I've noticed an increase in brain function amongst the "Freepers." Resolute condemnations of false science (e.g. "Inteligent Design") being taught in the schools, dissent on the Terri Schiavo issue, and admissions of being wrong about the "Schiavo Memo."

I was starting to worry: might the Republican party rid itself of wingnuts? Well, those fears proved unfounded.

Interstingly enough, an item about the aforementioned "Stop Hillary Now" campaign was posted to Free Republic this morning. I was looking through the comments to see if anyone mentioned Arthur Finkelstein's gay marriage, but alas, there were none. Instead, I saw the danger of yelling "Hillary Clinton" in a crowded assholium. This almost got "Post of the day":

I agree with you [on immigration].I have a daughter who has had a terrible time trying to get a decent job. Everywhere she has worked has been taken over by illegals. The Samalians and turban heads is running rampant.This one place she worked,they had to take a complete restroom to make a place for these people to pray in.I think it's appalling. If they want to come here and live,then they should live by OUR rules and way of life.Don't come over here and expect us to change everything to suit them. I also think they should learn to speak English before they come here. It's nerve wracking to hear all this jibberish,not knowing what they are saying. You don't know if they are talking about you or what the heck they are talking about.

But it was beaten out by this one (excerpt):

Even Rush got it wrong

No! Not Rush!

Posted by at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

Fuel Cells Coming to Laptops

Absolut Intel. Laptop computers aren't exactly an energy problem, but they could help popularize fuel cells. This article summarize the efforts of IBM, Sanyo and NEC, among others to bring methonal-powered fuel cells to laptops.

Soon, bitter, alcoholic consultants sitting in first class won't be the only things consuming alcohol on long plane flights.

Posted by at 11:26 AM | Comments (1)

 19¢

That's $263 more this year on the gas card for the average SUV driver. Gas went up nineteen cents over the last three weeks, in anticipation of the summer season.

Gas prices soared an average 19 cents in the past three weeks due to lingering high crude oil prices, growing demand and higher refining costs, an industry analyst said Sunday.

The average retail price for all three grades increased 18.95 cents to $2.32 per gallon between March 18 and Friday, said Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the semimonthy Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations around the country.

The most popular grade, self-serve regular, was priced at $2.29 a gallon, while customers paid $2.38 for midgrade. Premium averaged $2.48 a gallon for the period.

Crude prices, which briefly reached $58 last week, are likely to stay above $50 a barrel well into next year, Lundberg said.

"It's very possible that unless crude oil prices show another upsurge, then gas prices may have hit their peak already or will soon," she said.

Last week, the Energy Department said it expects gasoline prices to average $2.35 a gallon nationwide in May, the dawn of the heavy summer driving season. The Energy Information Administration reported that gasoline demand for this summer is projected to be 9.3 million barrels a day, up 1.8 percent over last summer, and the highest on record.

The highest average gas price in the nation for regular unleaded was $2.62 a gallon in Bakersfield. The lowest price was $2.06 in Newark, N.J.

Posted by Steven at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

Put the Hammer Down!

Could "Boot to Head" be far away for the Hammer? Word is that Karl Rove is pulling the trap door on DeLay:

Private GOP tensions over Tom DeLay’s ethics controversy spilled into public Sunday, as a Senate leader called on DeLay to explain his actions and one House Republican demanded the majority leader’s resignation.

“Tom’s conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election,” Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., told The Associated Press in an interview, calling for DeLay to step down as majority leader.

Well, if he's hurting the Republican party by exposing them for what they are, then I'm all for that. In fact, I'll raise a glass of DDT-laced beverage to the bug man for that little bit of community service.

Posted by at 10:14 AM | Comments (3)

The Problem With Hating Everything

Republicans sure do hate things. They rant about "hate filled" Liberals, but advance their "pro-family" agenda by framing it in terms of families that they hate (e.g. gay families, families where the husband wants to remove his wife from life support). They support peace in the Middle East, and so far their efforts have killed more people than all the suicide bombings combined.

There are two things that a good Republican can almost always be relied on to heap irrational, foaming-at-the-mouth scorn upon: Gay Marriage and Hillary Clinton. This is such "old news" that last month's New York Magazine article noting the formation of an anti-Hillary PAC was quickly forgotten.

Veteran Republican strategist, Arthur Finkelstein — a man who has advised George Pataki and Jesse Helms — announced the formation of "Stop Her Now," which plans to launch a pre-emptive "Swift-Boat Veterans" style smear campaign to sink a possible Clinton presidential bid. In the next few months, Finkelstein hopes to raise $10 million from Hillary-haters everywhere.

It will be interesting to see how successful Mr. Finklestien will be in his fundraising efforts amongst the Republican faithful. You see, it's recently come to light that at the ripe old age of 59, Arthur has finally gotten married... to a guy. The details were printed in last Friday's New York Times. Of course, frothing-at-the-mouth Hillary-hating conservatives don't read the New York Times, so they might miss out on the details:

Mr. Finkelstein, 59, who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal, said in a brief interview that he had married his partner of 40 years to ensure that the couple had the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.

"I believe that visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by all married people should be available to partners," he said.

He declined further comment on the wedding, which was in December.

Some of Mr. Finkelstein's associates said they were startled to learn that this prominent American conservative had married a man, given his history with the party, especially at a time when many Republican leaders, including President Bush, have campaigned against same-sex marriage and proposed amending the Constitution to ban it. Mr. Finkelstein has been allied over the years with Republicans who have fiercely opposed gay rights measures, including former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and has been the subject of attacks by gay rights activists who have accused him of hypocrisy. He was identified as gay in a Boston Magazine article in 1996.

The SJR staff wish Arthur and his partner great joy in their life together, and we hope they aren't too bitter when the people Arthur helped put into office have them burned at the stake for being Soddomites.

Posted by at 09:09 AM | Comments (1)

April 10, 2005

More Flower-Throwing In Iraq

Just thought that I'd point out that yesterday, April 9th, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis gathered in a square not named after George W. Bush, and didn't throw any flowers.

Oh, there was something named after Chimpy there, an effigy, and something was thrown at it: fire. Whoa yeah, things are going swimmingly in Iraq. They love us there.

The protests were hardly pro-Saddam. In fact, he was also burned in effigy and Bush and Blair were both compared to him. What?! Bush and Blair saved the Iraqis from Saddam's torture and rape rooms in Abu Ghraib. The British and American torture and rape rooms that replaced them are obviously so much better! Ingrates!

Posted by at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2005

Theiling The Burn

Dr. Stuart Thiel, a former tax attorney turned economics professor at DePaul University, has a web site where he analyzes polls under the name "Professor Pollkatz." On it, he has an interesting graph.

The graph below has two normalized trends. In red is President Chimpy's popularity. In blue, is the inverted price of gasoline. When the red line goes up, it means Bush is gaining popularity. When the blue line goes up, it means gas is cheaper. Rising gas prices make the blue line go down. According to this graph, they also make the red line go down, which is bad for Mr. Bush.

A full-resolution chart is on his site.

Now I know how the Democrats can get a landslide in the 2006 elections: put the voting booths at gas stations.

Posted by at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2005

The Final Word

The Pope makes a ruling from overtime. I don't have any special reaction to the recent death of Pope John Paul II. He seemed to be a man who tried to do good while constrained by dogmas and doctrines that ran counter to making things better for all peoples. He made an impact, and that's rare. Nonetheless, he's gone, hopefully to a well-earned rest, or whatever happens on the other side.

But he leaves us with one, rather secular thought, one I hadn't heard before though he expressed it more than 20 years ago (perhaps it never before was made public).

Pope John Paul II regretted not praying for his native Poland during the national team's run to the semifinals of the 1982 World Cup, according to the team's star player.

Zbigniew Boniek told the Polsat television station that the Polish team had met the pontiff before the finals in Spain and asked for his prayers.

"God does not have favorites in football," the pope replied, according to Boniek.

Granted, JP2 was talking about the sport commonly known in the USA (and practically nowhere else) as soccer, but I think that this is a statement that really should get distributed more widely. After all, this is the Pope making this advisory. That's a pretty high standard in terms of quality reliable information as these things go. Let's get this on some official NFL letterhead and distributed to all the teams and players, and next season, maybe, just maybe, there'll be a lot less gratitude to divine intervention (after all, if God favors one team to win, he must be waxing exceeding wroth upon the other, and that just doesn't fit with omnibenevolence). Players can go about with thanking God for their natural talents and abilities, but face it, He had no influence on scoring that winning touchdown. And we have the Pope's word on this. That's a referee who is very difficult to challenge.

Posted by at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)

Feeling the Burn

Still glad you bought that SUV? The Energy Information Administration is predicting $2.35/gal. for regular gas this summer. I expect higher still. Today I saw that premium unleaded is $2.39/gal. at most stations, and regular passed $2.20/gal. At these prices, it costs a quarter (25 ¢) to drive a Hummer H2 a mile, and $40/day for my work commute. That's $200/week to drive to work ($900/mo.!!!), more than double from last year's fuel prices.

The government projected on Thursday that gasoline prices would surge even higher in coming weeks and remain high through the summer, a forecast underscoring both the economic effect of the sharp rise in energy costs and growing political risks for President Bush.

The Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Energy Department, said it expected the price of unleaded regular gasoline to hit a peak national average of $2.35 a gallon in May and to average $2.28 from April through September. Last week the average price was $2.22.

With crude oil prices at record highs in recent weeks and still close to them, the White House is casting itself as immersed in addressing the problem. It is using the increase in oil and gasoline prices to raise the pressure on Congress to pass Mr. Bush's stalled energy bill, which the administration says would encourage domestic oil exploration and production, support alternative energy sources and improve conservation.

Mr. Bush discussed energy prices with his cabinet on Tuesday and is sure to raise the subject during a meeting being planned for this month with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer.

But Democrats say they intend to use the renewed focus on energy issues to revive their case that Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, both of whom worked in the oil business, are more interested in helping oil companies than in helping consumers. And several recent polls suggest that the spike in oil prices and the resulting rise in gasoline prices have undermined Mr. Bush's political standing.

"When gas prices go up to the level they're at now, they are in some ways the economic equivalent of the color-coded terrorism alerts," said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster. "They work their way through into public opinion very quickly in terms of affecting people's opinions about the direction of the nation and raising the stakes on pocketbook issues generally."

The good news, such as it is, is that these fuel prices are finally waking up the poorer Red state voters to the horror of their mistake. I'm buying my second VW TDI vehicle this weekend -- at which point both my cars will get 45+ MPG on the highway -- what's in your SUV?

We cannot drill our way out of this problem.

Posted by Steven at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2005

Lobbyists Paid for DeLay Granddaughter Shower

Is there anything this guy didn't get for favorable legislation? DeLay appears to have received a baby shower as part payment, er, donations, from firms representing legislative targets. Abramoff was involved, so you know it was "cash-n-carry".

A Texas energy company being investigated with regards to improper fundraising by those connected with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) held a baby shower for DeLay's daughter Danielle Ferro in May 2002—and the event was attended by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who paid for some of the congressman’s overseas travel, RAW STORY has found.

The shower, reported in the Washington, D.C. newspaper Roll Call Jun. 10, 2002 (article posted here), was held at the Washington offices of Reliant Energy Inc., a Texas-based power company that has given heavily to DeLay and his political action committees.

Donations collected from Reliant by a DeLay-linked political action committee are now the subject of a Texas state probe. DeLay’s daughter Danielle helped manage that committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and her records have been subpoenaed by an Austin grand jury.

An energy lobbyist who counted Reliant among her clients set up the May 10, 2002 event which she estimated cost $250.

Two hundred and fifty dollars. Remember, the GOP destroyed Wright over a $500 book royalty. Let's set the bar lower ...

Posted by Steven at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

DeLay Backed Milosovec Over Our Own Troops

Traitor. Check out this page for links to breaking stories about how the GOP and DeLay chose Milosovec (thanks in part to generous contributions to Mr. DeLay through Russians) over our own troops..

Benedict DeLay striked again.

Posted by Steven at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)

Save Phil

From his cousin, Bill. Just click, and Save Phil.

Posted by at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

Author of Schiavo Memo Fingered

Plame's snitch remains a mystery, but Schiavo's has been fingered. The Washington Post is reporting the indentity of the author of the GOP memo urging Republicans to use the Terri Schiavo fiasco for political gain.

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.

Martinez, the GOP's Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo. "I never did an investigation, as such," he said. "I just took it for granted that we wouldn't be that stupid. It was never my intention to in any way politicize this issue."

Martinez, a freshman who was secretary of housing and urban development for most of President Bush's first term, said he had not read the one-page memo. He said he inadvertently passed it to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who had worked with him on the issue. After that, officials gave the memo to reporters for ABC News and The Washington Post.

Harkin said in an interview that Martinez handed him the memo on the Senate floor, in hopes of gaining his support for the bill giving federal courts jurisdiction in the Florida case in an effort to restore the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube. "He said these were talking points -- something that we're working on here," Harkin said.

The mystery of the memo's origin had roiled the Capitol, with Republicans accusing Democrats of concocting the document as a dirty trick, and Democrats accusing Republicans of trying to duck responsibility for exploiting the dying days of an incapacitated woman.

Conservative Web logs have challenged the authenticity of the memo, in some cases likening it to the discredited documents about Bush's National Guard service that CBS News reported last fall.

Let's review. The GOP wraps the brain-dead body of Terri Schiavo around Tom DeLay and then claims the moral high ground. When the Democrats, through no fault of their own, acquire the "talking points" memo that explains the GOP tactic, they are accused of making it up. Comparisons to the CBS fiasco are raised (I'd like to take a moment to point out that the memos in the "Rathergate" incident were never proven incorrect -- Bush did get preferential consideration while in the "service") to further distance the GOP from their despicable tactic.

Now it turns out, the GOP lied, lied, and then lied some more. They wrote the memo. They (stupidly -- their own words) gave it to the Democrats. They denied creating it. Now, in what can only be described as a "miracle", they've been caught red handed, and the memo is still smoking. They still don't apologize for the craven use of Schiavo's plight for political gain, I can only hope the Democrats remind the American voter continuously in the Fall of 2006.

Why does anyone trust these lying liars?

Posted by Steven at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2005

DeLay's Family Paid Half a Million Since 2001 by PACs

DeLay is filthy, filthy, filthy. DeLay's wife and daugther have been paid over one-half a million dollars since 2001 by his political friends.

The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas.

Most of the payments to his wife, Christine A. DeLay, and his only child, Dani DeLay Ferro, were described in the disclosure forms as "fund-raising fees," "campaign management" or "payroll," with no additional details about how they earned the money. The payments appear to reflect what Mr. DeLay's aides say is the central role played by the majority leader's wife and daughter in his political career.

Although several members of Congress employ family members as campaign managers or on their political action committees, advocacy groups seeking an overhaul of federal campaign-finance and ethics laws say that the payments to Mr. DeLay's family members were unusually generous, and should be the focus of new scrutiny of the Texas congressman.

Mr. DeLay's national political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, or Armpac, said in a statement on Tuesday that the two women had provided valuable services to the committee in exchange for the payments: "Mrs. DeLay provides big picture, long-term strategic guidance and helps with personnel decisions. Ms. Ferro is a skilled and experienced professional event planner who assists Armpac in arranging and organizing individual events."

In recent weeks, public interest groups have called on the House ethics committee and the Justice Department to review lavish, privately financed overseas trips for Mr. DeLay and his aides, including a 1997 trip to Russia that was underwritten by a conservative education group closely linked to a powerful Republican lobbyist who often boasted of his influence with the majority leader.

The payments to Mr. DeLay's family have continued into 2005; the latest monthly disclosure filed by Americans for a Republican Majority shows Mrs. DeLay was paid was paid $4,028 last month, while Mrs. Ferro received $3,681. Earlier statements show that the two women received similar monthly fees from the political action committee throughout 2003 and 2004.

Mrs. DeLay has been involved in her husband's political career and his fund-raising operations in Washington and Texas. In an interview in 2003 with Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill, a spokesman for Mr. DeLay explained Mrs. DeLay's role as "the final signoff of Tom's travel schedule, what events he attends and what his name appears on."

Mrs. Ferro has also helped manage Mr. DeLay's charity operations. Financial disclosure statements filed by Mr. DeLay's House campaign committees, which are separate from Americans for a Republican Majority, show that Mrs. Ferro and her political consulting firm, Coastal Consulting of Sugar Land, Tex., received $222,000 from 2001 through last year, reflecting her role in the re-election campaigns.

Although there has been no suggestion from prosecutors that Mrs. Ferro is under investigation by the grand jury in Austin, her records were subpoenaed in the inquiry, which is focused on the fund-raising activities of Texans for a Republican Majority, a state political action committee modeled on Americans for a Republican Majority. Mrs. Ferro received about $30,000 in fund-raising and consulting fees from Texans for a Republican Majority, the committee's records show.

This monster is washing in dirty money; he's sold his power to the highest bidder and lined his nest with the proceeds. When will the nation see how corrupt he is?

Posted by Steven at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

Flags

I'm looking for a bit of Church/State separation here. Kevin Drum has raised a question that has been nagging me since the Pope died. Why are all these flags at half mast?

I saw a flag flying at half staff yesterday and wondered what it was for. Couldn't be for the pope, could it? Why would an American flag fly at half staff because the leader of the Catholic church had died?

But no: that's exactly what's going on. I don't want to make a big deal out of this, and I don't know if previous presidents have done the same thing, but it sure doesn't seem right. Would we do the same thing if the Archbishop of Canterbury died? Or the Ayatollah Sistani?

...

But it's a red herring. Heads of state die all the time and we don't lower our flags for them. If the pope weren't a religious leader, we wouldn't be flying flags at half staff, would we?

I mean, WTF? The Pope is a religious leader, and yet all these political symbols are being used to recognize a Religion.

Posted by Steven at 10:23 PM | Comments (1)

Scholars Disagree

On the GOP, that is. Paul Krugman's column today tries to explain why so few in academia are Republican. Maybe it's because they carry a dogmatic world-view that runs counter to Science, Reason and Critical Thinking (aren't those, along with Secular Humanism, the Great Sins of our times?).

Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.

Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.

And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.

If it got that far, universities would probably find ways to cope - by, say, requiring that all entering students sign waivers. But political pressure will nonetheless have a chilling effect on scholarship. And that, of course, is its purpose.

All I ask is that if you reject Science, that you give up the benefits of it, too. Like technology, and learning. And civilization "as we know it". It can't be that hard to follow your cold, dogmatic heart on this, can it?

Posted by Steven at 03:10 PM | Comments (1)

April 04, 2005

Ann Coulter Almost Starts Riot

Can't take even a mild warm front, let alone the real heat. Ann Coulter gave a lecture at Kansas University and was heckled by "liberals" in the audience (like this never happens when Michael Moore speaks publically). Her response? She asked for ten "college Republicans" to remove the hecklers, in effect, she deputized thugs to stifle free speech. Good thing she doesn't rely on free speech herself to get her message of violence out to the GOP.

Posted by Steven at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)

DeLay Continues to DeNy

It's always about DeLay. Tom DeLay continues to slap the stain of corruption and malefeasance on his party by forcing the GOP to defend him even as he compares his plight to the recently deceased Terri Schiavo and others who had the misfortune to make headlines while he slowly sinks.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has launched a characteristically defiant response to attacks on his ethics and leadership, even as the controversy threatens to compete with the Republican legislative agenda when Congress returns this week from spring recess.

As criticism of the 57-year-old Texan intensified last week with a blast from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board and the unveiling of an anti-DeLay television ad campaign by nonprofit groups, he began a counterattack designed to shore up his backing in the Republican House caucus and among social conservatives.

In a meeting with the heads of several social conservative organizations, DeLay sought support in a fight that he said was aimed at ending the GOP majority in Congress and thwarting the social conservative movement. Some responded immediately.

"The only fire behind all that smoke generated by the leftist attacks is their burning hatred of a good man," wrote Morton C. Blackwell, a prominent conservative, in a posting on the American Conservative Union's website. "You and I must do all we can to make sure any politician who hopes to have conservative support … had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay."

Democrats are promising to quickly bring up ethical questions surrounding DeLay when Congress returns to work Monday. And the concern among some Republicans is that DeLay may step into a political trap by fiercely responding.

Democrats, Republicans say, are determined to further raise DeLay's national political profile. And DeLay is not the sort of politician to seek to lower his profile in the face of conflict.

"He draws energy from these fights," said one GOP strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He sees this in terms of good and evil: He is all good and his opponents are all evil."

Of course, seeing everything as "good and evil" where you are automatically the "good" and everything else is "evil" is, I believe, a classic example of moral relativism, which I thought these "evil fuckers" were against.

They don't stand tall for a single virtue or principal they claim -- it's all about power, power, POWER. Like Capitalism, all they are about is the money.

Talk about evil.

Posted by Steven at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)

Nuclear War Is Coming

There's going to be a showdown. The GOP is determined to drop the bomb on the Senate and end fillibustering for judicial appointees. Nevermind that they used it (a lot) against Democratic Senates. Nevermind that it violates the spirit and principals of the Senate. Nevermind all that history and tradition ... what matters here is raw, tyrannical power. They have it, and they want more.

Democrats note that most federal judges are Republican nominees — 55%. The proportion on the Supreme Court is even higher, with seven of nine justices Republican appointees. So Democrats contend that Republicans are not just interested in conservative judges or those with a limited view of judicial power, but judges inclined to be activist in the service of conservative ideology.

"They are seeking to take away the independence of the judiciary — the crown jewel in our system of government — so that they can advance their own ideological agenda of the day," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "That is exactly the kind of tyranny that our ancestors fought to prevent."

As the conflict moves toward its endgame, each side is counting votes. There may be 55 Republicans in the Senate, but a handful — mostly moderates and traditionalists — have expressed concern that the nuclear option is too drastic and would damage Republicans the next time they were the minority.

Frist needs 51 votes to change the rules to deny Democrats the filibuster. Among the senators believed to be weighing whether to oppose the idea are Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.).

Each side also is trying to gauge whether they will be blamed if Republicans overturn the filibuster and Democrats respond by bringing the Senate's work to a near halt.

Democrats are backtracking somewhat from earlier threats to stall the Senate's operations, insisting that they will not block bills to support the troops in Iraq or that provide for other crucial government functions.

They are mindful that the public blamed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) — not former President Clinton — for shutting down the federal government over budget conflicts in 1995.

"Democrats learned their lesson from that and won't go down that road," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Minority Leader Reid. "But the Republicans will know the difference between a cooperative minority and an uncooperative minority."

Republicans are busily trying to lay the groundwork for their case. Frist is expected to spend most of April attempting to highlight what he considers Democratic obstructionism on the judicial issue.

"We will continue to bend over backward and investigate every alley and basement to see if we can work this out with the Democrats," said Frist spokesman Robert Stevenson.

At the moment, both sides have an interest in appearing stalwart in the hope the other side will blink.

But even privately, it's hard to find anyone on Capitol Hill who can envision a deal that could defuse the conflict.

"I think we're going to reach a point where there's no alternative," Hatch said.

Remember, this is how dictatorships start. First the executive, then the legislative, and finally the judicial branches fall.

Posted by Steven at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2005

Job Growth Heading

And while everyone was grieving Terri ... Turns out the economy is sputtering. Job growth is dropping like a rock, and inflation is looming (especially in the energy sector).

The nation's unemployment rate dipped slightly in March, the government said on Friday, but job creation was weaker than most analysts had expected.

The nation added about 110,000 jobs last month, about half the number that Wall Street analysts had predicted, and the unemployment rate declined to 5.2 percent from 5.4 percent in February.

The pace of job creation was much slower than in February, when the economy added 243,000 jobs, and it was the smallest increase in employment since last July.

Over all, the Labor Department report suggested a continuation of the unusually slow job recovery that has been under way over the last two years.

The markets initially rose Friday after reports of the unexpectedly weak job report, which was potentially good news for investors because it eased fears that inflationary pressures would force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more quickly in the months ahead. But stocks turned sharply lower after an increase in oil prices and a manufacturing report, which indicated high prices, fanned fears of inflation.

The nation lost about 2.7 million jobs during and after the recession of 2001, and employment has recovered in fits and starts in the last two years. About 3.1 million jobs have been added since May 2003, and the unemployment rate has declined from a high of 6.3 percent.

But wages have not kept up with inflation, suggesting that workers still have little bargaining power even as corporate profits have soared.

Hourly wages and average weekly earnings climbed 2.6 percent over the last year, while consumer prices climbed 3 percent.

The high price of oil will starve any recovery currently underway. It's as simple as that. And with the Fed (aka "Greenspan") raising rates again, we'll have stagflation before we know it.

Posted by Steven at 01:17 PM | Comments (1)

Wither DARPA?

I'm speaking to you through the miracle of DARPA ... The Bush Administration is gutting basic funding for research, the same research that made it possible for you to read this sentence.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon - which has long underwritten open-ended "blue sky" research by the nation's best computer scientists - is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a more immediate payoff.

Hundreds of research projects supported by the agency, known as Darpa, have paid off handsomely in recent decades, leading not only to new weapons, but to commercial technologies from the personal computer to the Internet. The agency has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to basic software research, too, including work that led to such recent advances as the Web search technologies that Google and others have introduced.

The shift away from basic research is alarming many leading computer scientists and electrical engineers, who warn that there will be long-term consequences for the nation's economy. They are accusing the Pentagon of reining in an agency that has played a crucial role in fostering America's lead in computer and communications technologies.

"I'm worried and depressed," said David Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who is president of the Association of Computing Machinery, an industry and academic trade group. "I think there will be great technologies that won't be there down the road when we need them."

University researchers, usually reluctant to speak out, have started quietly challenging the agency's new approach. They assert that Darpa has shifted a lot more work in recent years to military contractors, adopted a focus on short-term projects while cutting support for basic research, classified formerly open projects as secret and placed new restrictions on sharing information.

This is suicide, as a high tech nation. Without the industry that DARPA has created through research funding, we'd be a second world nation at best. Is this more of Bush's "faith based" initiatives? Does he think God will give him alien technology to keep our economy going? What fools be these?

Posted by Steven at 11:19 AM | Comments (3)

April 01, 2005

Are You Ready For $100/bbl. Oil?

The BBC is running a story claiming that analysts are predicting $100+ bbl. oil.

Crude oil prices hit record levels on Friday, with leading investment bank Goldman Sachs warning the cost of a barrel could eventually top $100.

Goldman Sachs said that the oil market may be in the early stages of a "super spike", which could push prices as high as $105 a barrel.

It said strong global demand, allied to potential instability in oil producing countries, could inflate prices.

Roughly speaking, that would mean $4/gal. gasoline, and something like a trillion dollar expansion in energy costs per annum in the U.S. alone. $100/bbl. oil makes 80's era solar look viable. Start looking for those renewable energy firms to invest in.

Posted by Steven at 03:49 PM | Comments (4)

The New High Is A New Low

This is NOT an April's Fools joke. Hewlett-Packard gets a new CEO today, taking over from the justifiably-ousted Carly Fiorina, whose lasting legacy is the ill-advised and so far disastrous purchase of (and failed integration with) Compaq. The new guy, Mark Hurd, comes with a reputation for aggressive cost-cutting. Obviously, though, he doesn't wield his scythe on the executive floor; check out the golden handshake he's getting just for walking in the door.

According to the employment agreement, Hurd will receive cash, stock and perks worth at least $20 million for simply walking in the door at HP's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters.

Paul Hodgson, senior analyst at the Corporate Library, a research organization, called Hurd's deal a prime example of the kind of "golden hello" package now commonly handed out by large public companies.

"This is exactly the same kind of contract they made for Carly when she started, and we saw what the result of that was," Hodgson said. "Hurd is getting so much up front that is absolutely unrelated to his performance."

Hurd's package includes a $2 million signing bonus, a $2.75 million cash "relocation allowance," 1.15 million stock options valued by the company at $6.9 million and 400,000 restricted HP shares worth about $8 million.

In addition to the relocation allowance, Hurd will also receive free housing for a year and a four-year "mortgage interest subsidy." There will also be "no limit on the weight of household goods" he chooses to ship to California, according to the agreement.

In addition, the contract calls for HP to reimburse Hurd for up to a 20 percent decline in the value of 850,184 shares he owns in the firm he is leaving behind, Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp.

In addition to the signing money, Hurd's contract calls for an annual salary of $1.4 million, an annual bonus of at least $2.8 million and as much as $8.4 million, and long-term incentive payments of between $4.2 million and $12.6 million per year. HP spokeswoman Monica Sarkar said the long-term incentive payments are not guaranteed.

In the employment agreement, HP said 450,000 of the stock options, valued at $2.7 million, and the 400,000 restricted shares were awarded "to make up for compensation forfeited from" Hurd's previous employer. HP spokeswoman Sarkar said the amounts were based on what Hurd was "leaving on the table" at NCR.

I don't really begrudge Hurd this jaw-dropping package; if his team was smart enough to negotiate this from the HP board, more power to them. But HP's board not only forked over this massive pile of loot fast on the heels of a similar deal to the previous, failed CEO, they did it with negligible accountability. Hurd gets all of this regardless of how HP does under his tenure. Yes, the stock options introduce some variability in how much he collects, but the total range goes from "large fortune" to "huge fortune" so the Hurd family will be in green clover no matter what.

I think the HP board is nuts, but let me provide more context. I used to work for a semiconductor consortium, of which HP was one member. The particular division in which I worked, advanced lithography, was of no apparent interest to HP; their representatives never showed up at regular strategic planning and review meetings. At last note HP was still a member of the consortium, and so apparently considered some of the technology transfer of the entire organization to be of value; but, HP only had one assignee in the consortium (whereas other member companies had a half-dozen or more), so clearly wasn't too concerned with wielding influence upon the directions of research.

One of the favorite activities of the member companies (not all of them, but some; I don't know where HP stood on this matter), well above my project manager station, was to demand that the annual dues be lowered. Broadly speaking, this is a reasonable request, but so very painful to the organization and limiting -- severely limiting, in many cases -- to the research. I won't talk numbers and I'm no longer privy to them anyway, but for a fraction of what new CEO Mark Hurd will be taking home, HP could increase its dues paid by a single-digit integer factor and not even blink. Hurd certainly wouldn't miss it.

HP, even crawling from Carly's wreckage, is still a heavyweight technology company, and could be pursuing interesting research and putting engineers and technologists into well-paying positions. Today, they decided to buy another reputed superstar CEO and dump a mountain of lucre into his pocket. From my little perspective, it's not a very sound proposition.

And what the hell kind of relo requires $2.75M? What is he going to be moving, a home museum? Of all the line items, that's the one that most strikes me as a purely-for-profit boondoggle.

Posted by at 09:05 AM | Comments (1)

Jeb Bush's Florida

Meanwhile, across the peninsula... This story is nothing but a stupid tragedy, but it struck me as being a microcosm, a snapshot of the Florida that Jeb governs and the America that his prodigal brother oversees.

As her parents lay mortally wounded, a 5-year-old girl called 911, telling an emergency dispatcher, "I think they're dead." Police said Aeneas and Julie Hernlen were shot to death early Monday by a man who mistakenly believed the couple had turned him in for drug possession. Their daughter, Tia, was not harmed.

Investigators said the gunman, David Edward Johnson, 33, committed suicide later Monday. The Hernlens had nothing to do with his drug arrest late last year, authorities said.

It's got it all -- death (double homicide style, with a side of suicide), drugs (not mentioned in this article, but including steroids), bad intel, and a child's life ruined in a moment of rage (brought on by suspicion that the victims were upholding the law) manifested through gunfire.

Young Tia Hernlen is now in the care of relatives, but her life is shattered; here's hoping she continues to show the strength and courage, and receive the love, needed to endure.

All this, in Jeb Bush's Florida.

Where's the massive, public displays of outrage? Where's the demand that something be done for this young survivor? Probably in the same place where the political value of this situation lies: nowhere, since there is none.

Heartfelt condolences, and hopes for better days, for Tia Hernlen.

Shifting a bit, I'd like to see a national awareness campaign, and really it'd require the NRA to lead it, to stave off the massive, wholesale slaughters of people by deranged gunmen who later take their own lives. The promotional angle is this: Thinking of going on a killing spree with firearms? Shoot yourself first. The benefits are many; no need to face off against the police; valuable police time not needed to track you down; many fewer lives and families destroyed. Saves time and effort all around, since you (the gunman) are going to cap yourself anyway; skip ahead to the big finish.

Think of it as going postal with a SASE.

Posted by at 01:19 AM | Comments (2)