Rudy on MTP

Giuliani just told Tim Russert that he's opposed to mandating a 35 mpg standard for automobiles by 2020 because congress should concentrate on nuclear and hydroelectric power instead.

Huh?

Mike Huckabee - nauseating liar

In 1992, Mike Huckabee was running for the Republican US Senate seat from Arkansas when he said AIDS patients should be quarantined. Fast forward 15 years and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is running for his party's nomination for President. And he has some splainin' to do:

Before a disease can be cured and contained we need to know exactly how and with near certainty what level of contact transmits the disease. There was still too much confusion about HIV transmission in those early years. Recall that in 1991, Kimberly Bergalis testified in front of Congress after contracting HIV from her dentist, and that summer a study was published showing that HIV was transmitted through breastmilk more easily than had been thought. But the federal government provided some guidelines: Also in 1991 the Centers for Disease Control recommended restrictions on the practice of HIV-positive health care workers.

Huckabee is lying. HIV's transmission routes and epidemiology were fairly well understood by 1985. Reagan's Surgeon General C. Everett Koop took the lead in educating the public about the nature of the disease at least four years before Huckabee misled Arkansas voters.

It is asinine for Huckabee to claim he was advocating the "same public health protocols" as used for other diseases. Somebody should ask Huckabee to name a single disease where public health policy calls for quarantining victims. By 1992, it was well known that quarantines would have done little to stem the AIDS epidemic, since a person can carry the virus for years without showing symptoms.

But Huckabee wasn't concerned about public health policy in 1992 - he just wanted to appeal to his base's prejudice against people living with HIV/AIDS and those at risk for it.

Anti-evolution. Pro abstinence-only sex ed. Scientific illiterate. Yep, Republicans are going to love this guy.

The shadow candidate

Does every Massachusetts politician think he's the ghost of JFK? Is there something in the water in the Bay State? Willard Romney (and stop calling him Mitt, everyone) spoke directly to undecided Iowa Republicans today to put them at ease about his Mormon faith. Unfortunately for Willard, the rest of the country was watching when he said this:

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

What utter hogwash. Willard Romney is selling two contradictory ideas in the same paragraph. First, that government should not interfere with religion, and vice versa. Then, in the next breath, that government should not be afraid to embrace religion.


Because that's what behind his sweeping generality about those who "seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God." What the hell is Willard talking about? The public airwaves are filled to the brim with God talk. Church groups are free to congregate on public lands for worship, baptism, or creation science scavenger hunts. Our coins bear the words "In God We Trust", despite apocryphal emails to the contrary. But the greatest testimony to Willard's mandacity is when our public domain news media give Romney a free pass out of respect for his religious faith. No lie is big enough that the media won't scurry for cover when uttered in the shadow of the cross.

John F. Kennedy famously spoke to an assembly of Texan religious leaders during the 1960 Presidential campaign, and it was JFK's memory that Willard Romney hoped to evoke in Thursday's speech, also in Texas. But when Kennedy spoke, he made it clear there were bigger issues at play than a candidate's choice of religious faith. Romney claims just the opposite, that a candidate's faith is important, but not which religion he belongs to. You can watch JFK's speech here:

Bangkok market

Bangkok's official population is 6 million, but many experts think it could be three times that. Space, obviously, is at a premium.

First Lego League

I had a great time last Sunday helping to judge the First Lego League competition at Mukwonago High School.

Laura Bush greets "Beekeeper of the Year"

Celebrating 200 years of American apiculture.

We do not torture

On Sept. 11, 2001, an Egyptian national named Abdallah Higazy was staying in a New York City hotel room when the planes hit. Higazy and other guests quickly evacuated the building, and a short time later hotel workers found a device in Higazy's room that enables a person to communicate with airline pilots.

Authorities suspected Higazy was involved in the 9/11 plot and arrested him. So far, so good.

But the FBI got a little crazy and threatened Higazy's family with extradition to an Egyptian torture chamber if he didn't confess. Higazy at first denied any knowledge of the strange device, but he couldn't hold out for long. He finally confessed, thus sparing his wife and children. A despondent, shocked Higazy headed for the bowels of the New York City justice system.

Meanwhile, an airline pilot showed up at Higazy's hotel and asked if anyone had seen the radio that he accidentally left in the hotel room closet.

So the courts free Higazy (Hey guy, sorry about that. No hard feelings, right?), and Higazy lawyers up and sue the hotel and the fascist prick FBI agent that threatened his wife and kids.

Now the story gets real interesting. Steve Bergstein, a legal blogger at Psychsound, was checking federal court decisions one day not long ago and came across a 44-page document on the Higazy case. Then he posted the story on his blog as he ate lunch, cause that's what blogging lawyers do. Then, well, I'll let Steve tell the story:

Then something strange happened: a few minutes after I posted the blog, the opinion vanished from the Court of Appeals website! I had never seen this before, and what made all the more strange was that it involved a coerced confession over 9/11. What the hell was going on?

I let some other legal bloggers know about this, particularly the How Appealing blog and Appellate Law and Practice. They both ran a commentary on the missing opinion. Then someone sent How Appealing a PDF of the decision (probably very few of them were floating around since the opinion was posted for a brief period of time) and How Appealing posted the decision.

Then things got even stranger. The Court of Appeals actually phoned How Appealing to request that he remove the opinion from his website since it contained classified information. The Court said that a revised opinion would come out the next day without the classified information. How Appealing actually refused to remove the opinion. Through it all, hundreds of people came to my legal blog to see my summary of the opinion. It was either my blog or printing out and reading a 44 page epic.

The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified. Just as the opinion gets interesting, when we are about to learn how an FBI agent named Templeton squeezed the "truth" out of Higazy, the opinion reads at page 7: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."

Fortunately, the US Court of Appeals for Manhattan ruled for Higazy, so his suit can proceed.

More global warming denialist comments

Because some people were put on Earth for my amusement:

The sun is hotter now, the earth has warmed because of increased solar activity. That seems so simple to me, why would anyone believe that a naturaly accuring gas like CO2 could raise the earths temp?
Because some borderline retarded, self serving, pompous, hipocrit tells you it does?
Global warming is real, we cannot stop it, we need to stop wasting resorces on prevention and start working towards a nation that thrives in the warmer climate.

Such as investing in Florida waterfront property, currently located in Georgia.

Gore was very pissed after 2000 elections and he wanted to fight those that beat him. Bush being an oil man made Gore choose Global Warming as his platform.If Gore had won that election all this Global Warming fear would not have been an issue. That is as political as it gets Gore!

Don't leave out the Decline and Fall of the American Empire fear. Or the Arrest and Detention Without a Warrant Fear.

It is politically motivated and has already cost Americans billions of dollars.Power companies have had to retro-fit power plants to remove emissions that volcanos around the world spit out at a rates higher than all plants combined. Just one example of how it is political.

Volcanoes are Republicans?

What can brown do for you?

How does a non-white candidate for office overcome racism to become governor of the poorest, least-educated state in the union? By acting more ignorant than his constituents!

Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, was elected governor of Louisiana yesterday. Jindal, 36, is Oxford educated, yet supports teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution, and banning all abortions. No word on whether he plans to marry his first cousin, too.

Lousiana hasn't elected a non-white governor in over 100 years, but this time things are different:

Yet Mr. Jindal, with his decisive victory on Saturday, appears to have overcome a significant racial hurdle that blocked him in 2003, according to analysts: race-based opposition in the deeply conservative northern and eastern parishes of Louisiana that once supported the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

A born-again Roman Catholic, Mr. Jindal made a particular campaign target of these areas, visiting them frequently and bringing his brand of devout Christianity to their rural churches. His social-conservative message — teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in public schools, a total ban on abortion, repealing hate-crimes laws — would have been welcome in these areas.

Also welcome in "these areas" - non-uppity minorities. Mr. Jindal will fit in perfectly.

Meet Trent Wisecup

This is what panic looks like.

Trent Wisecup, the chief of staff to Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Bush's BFF), runs interference for his boss when a constituent starts asking questions. Apparently Wisecup's idea of constituent service is to channel Sean Hannity on a bad day. A sample of Wisecup's witty remarks:

"You're pro-Toyota and you live in Detroit."
"You're blinded by your hatred of this country."
"You're a political activited with a poilitical agenda."
"Go away. We don't want you here."

This really is how they think.

Congratulations Mr. Gore

A Nobel Peace Prize for Al Gore is small consolation for a stolen election, but I'll settle for that, plus the sound of Rush Limbaugh's head exploding.

Man's contribution to global warming is as close to scientific certainty as it's going to get. Only fools and scientific illiterates disagree. And here's what they're saying:

After looking through the comments it seems everyone has rightly realized that Gore's arguments are see-through.

i believe the same tactics are used in arguing for evolution. all this crap about scientific consensus and how all other people who disagree are flat earth people. its just plain brainwashing.

I blame Galileo. Stupid empiricism.

answer this question ... you have an Olympic sized swimming pool (50m x 25m x 2m) filled with the current atmosphere. 2,500,000 liters worth. How many of these liters are man-made greenhouse gases? (CO2, CH4, N2O, CFCm CCl4, CH3CCl3, CHF3, etc.)

Does this mean we'll have to wear Speedos and shower before we go outside?

I've studied the problem and done the math. The amount of green house gases in the atmosphere are man-made is less than 0.002% of the total. That's a tiny tiny amount, yet, we've been led to believe this amount is some how the tipping factor to global warming. What a crock. The problem is that these lies have been promoted as the truth, and the real truth is some kind of oil industry smear campaign. That IS the problem.

And I'll be presenting my data at the Cletus County Adult Education Science Fair tomorrow night.

Clifford May: liar and coward

That's right, Mr. May. Deal with it.

Can someone tell me what controversial procedures have been used at Guantanamo Bay? As far as I'm aware there is not a shred of hard evidence — and certainly no proof — that torture or even enhanced interrogation methods have been employed there.

Hey, we all make mistakes. But only creepy little fascists like Clifford May make mistakes and then stick by their words. He has a President to protect.

This is what I don't get about the neo-con right. They had this vision for how to project American power in a way that assured "an American century". I was OK with that, on a very abstract level. I mean I'd rather live the rest of my life in an American century than a Chinese century or a Brazilian century. And American values of free-speech and respect for human rights have had a pretty good run for the last 100 years or so.

But the neo-con vision didn't work out quite the way May and the other pukes planned it, and thinking people have tossed their fetid ideology in the compost bin of history, where it will slowly decompose with the dessicated orange rinds of communism and the stale coffee grounds of fascism. But still the neo-cons fight on with one ridiculous lie after another. We do not torture! The terrorists will follow us home!

It's not reasonable to expect corrupt wantwits like Clifford May to correct themselves, to admit what everybody already knows. They are not about accountability, or self respect, or contributing to the marketplace of ideas. For Clifford May and the rest, it's about saving their hides, the one thing about America least worth saving.

Taps for Larry Craig

A Minnesota judge today ruled that Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Closet) guilty plea to disorderly conduct was "accurate, voluntary and intelligent" and "the conviction is supported by the evidence."

It may be a while before Craig is called intelligent again. Senate Republicans are pledging their own ethics investigation into Senator Wide Stance, because (a) they want him out of their party and (b) a GOP show trial will divert the public's attention from Republican scandals involving the US Attorney firings, mercenaries running AMOK with no accountability, the administration's war crimes involving torture of prisoners, and several others I won't add because this sentence is already too long.

The case may seem open and shut, much like a bathroom stall door, but the ACLU has lined up behind Craig, figuratively anyway. Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a charge which has been used for decades against gays and other minorities to quell dissent and quash otherwise harmless behavior.

Limbaugh clarifies

His "phony soldier" comment was only directed at people who pretend to be soldiers, but never were. To clarify his point further, Limbaugh explained that Rep. Jack Murtha, a decorated Vietnam combat vet, is an example of a phony soldier.


Got that?

Weak-end warrior

Where's the outrage? Where's the House and Senate Censure resolutions?

Rush Limbaugh says the US military is riddled with "phony soldiers":

During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq “phony soldiers.” He made the comment while discussing with a caller a conversation he had with a previous caller, “Mike from Chicago,” who said he “used to be military,” and “believe[s] that we should pull out of Iraq.” Limbaugh told the second caller, whom he identified as “Mike, this one from Olympia, Washington,” that “[t]here’s a lot” that people who favor U.S. withdrawal “don’t understand” and that when asked why the United States should pull out, their only answer is, ” ‘Well, we just gotta bring the troops home.’ … ‘Save the — keeps the troops safe’ or whatever,” adding, “[I]t’s not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.” “Mike” from Olympia replied, “No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.” Limbaugh interjected, “The phony soldiers.” The caller, who had earlier said, “I am a serving American military, in the Army,” agreed, replying, “The phony soldiers.”

Limbaugh speaks with authority on the subject of phone soldiers. He avoided the Vietnam draft by claiming a pilonidal cyst.

Eat cheese or die!

I just want to give a shout out to both of my state's US Senators. Russ Feingold (D-Freakin' Awesome) and Herb Kohl (D-Better than McCain) have thrown their support to the Habeus Corpus Restoration Act. But alas, only 52 senators are on record for this important bill. We need eight more patriots to override President Bush's expected veto.

Habeus corpus guarantees that the government can't throw us in jail without letting us know the charges. Totalitarian dictators, police states, and the Republican Party have no use for habeus.

Bring our troop home

Among President Bush's many head scratching-moments during his Thursday night address to the nation was when he thanked the 36 nations that support the American mission in Iraq. That numbers falls to 35 after October 1 when Iceland pulls its man out of Baghdad. That's right - one guy:

Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir has decided to remove an Icelandic Crisis Response Unit (ICRU) member from a NATO training program for the Iraqi army in Baghdad next month, causing disappointment among NATO leaders.

The ICRU member has been working in Baghdad for the last two years, primarily as a media representative, and will cease working there October 1, Morgunbladid reports.

John Craddock, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO and the US European Command, said at a press conference in Iceland yesterday that Iceland is an important and active NATO member and that he was disappointed with Gísladóttir’s decision.

But Craddock added that he understands that NATO member nations have to make decisions according to their best interests and “estimate what they can do and what they cannot do, what they want to do and what they don’t.”

Can you imagine a country with a leader that makes decisions based on "what they can do and what they cannot do, what they want to do and what they don’t?"

We are all Icelanders now.

GOP to America: "We own 9/11, dammit!"

I was going to write about Ann Coulter and Rudy Giuliani appearing together at a 9/11 commemoration tonight, and what a God-awful idea that was. But then I had second thoughts. It seemed hypocritical for me to attack these two 9/11 fetishists for not remembering the day properly, while I'm venting just as much rage right back at them. President Bush and his Republican attack poodles have been milking that tragedy for six years now, and it's brought us to a point where the GOP has the country convinced it owns 9/11.

I was going to write about Ann Coulter and Rudy Giuliani, but then I read this from Milwaukee blogger Illusory Tenant:

Every once in awhile we need to be reminded that there are thoughtful and even scholarly conservative Republicans, as opposed to the contingent of moronic dipshits that populates the blogosphere and wake up every morning to go and see what Michelle Malkin commands them to be outraged about today.

Despite George Bush's best efforts to make us forget, Americans of every political stripe walk among us who can put 9/11 in its proper perspective. They know that liberals don't want to offer counseling to al Qaeda terrorists; that dissent is patriotic; and that democracies prevail because of, not despite, the rule of law. They know outrage, a natural consequence of the 9/11 attacks, becomes toxic when used to rally the base instead of the country.

Of course you won't hear these words on "conservative" talk radio, or read them on Powerline, except as a punchline to a joke. Only conservatives can make up jokes about 9/11, and Coulter and Giuliani will be knocking 'em dead tonight.

Conspiracy theories

People who think 9/11 was an inside job seriously need to have their heads examined. They cherry pick evidence that supports their asinine suspicions and ignore the mountain of data that goes against them. Debating these loons is like playing Wack-a-Mole - as soon as you knock one dubious claim on the head with the hammer of evidence, another claim pops up.

That said, if it weren't for 9/11 conspiracy nuts we wouldn't have 11 Settembre, a fascinating blog by an Italian skeptic with impressive technological skills. Enjoy.

Iraqi doctors surge to border

Maybe Brit Hume will ask White House Surge Spokesman David "On Board" Petraeus about this during their one hour Fox News love fest:

According to the Iraqi Medical Association (IMA), the shortage of doctors and nurses in Iraq is now critical and having a devastating effect, especially on small towns and villages.

“Our latest research shows that up to 75 percent of doctors, pharmacists and nurses have left their jobs at universities, clinics and hospitals,” Walid Rafi, a senior member of the IMA, told IRIN. Of these, at least 55 percent have fled abroad, he added.

According to Rafi, low salaries and the shortage of equipment and medicines, are other push factors. “Medical staff earn US$50-300 per month. They might persevere for a while but if the opportunity arises, they don’t think twice and leave the country,” Rafi said.

Here's another question that won't be asked: Why are Iraqis fleeing their country for the safety of neighboring military dictatorship Syria, if Iraq is so much better off without Saddam? What about all those purple thumbs - are they pointing up, or pointing down, when it comes to the surge?