"Fundamentalist Redneck Fourth Reich": Part II

A couple of months back, I posited that the current administration is creating what I refer to as a Fundamentalist Redneck Fourth Reich, or FR2. Today, I'd like to carry this thought a bit further (or beat this dead horse some more, depending on your point of view).

Perhaps the best way to start is by explaining how I decided on the name "Fundamentalist Redneck Fourth Reich".

"Fundamentalist"

I don't think anyone can reasonably dispute the administration's attempts to suck up to the fundie wingnuts. Whether it's a gay-marriage ban, outlawing abortion, school vouchers, faith-based initiatives, whatever, the Republican Party is desperately wooing the fundies. Fortunately, thus far, preznit has stiffed them; aside from some half-hearted support for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (for which he mouthed support, but refused to commit to politically), virtually all of the fundie wingnut advances have been on the state and local levels.

For the administration hierarchy, this is an exercise in hypocrisy. Bush, Cheney, and the rest are not Christians, no matter what they claim. They -- especially Bush -- profess great devotion to the tenets of Christianity, but they betray those very same tenets with their actions. How could the "culture of life" that demanded keeping a brain-dead Terri Schiavo alive and that demanded an outright ban on abortion also be responsible for hundreds of executions? How could the "culture of life" be so cavalier about the thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan?

There is additional hypocrisy in the administration's approach to gays: the administration has repeatedly claimed to be in favor of a Constitutional Amendment proclaiming marriage to be "between one man and one woman" -- and hence legalizing (nay, encouraging) discrimination against gays -- despite the embarrassing facts that Dickless Cheney has an openly gay daughter (who must be ready to kill herself, with The Maximum Prick as a father), Lynne Cheney penned a highly-erotic lesbian encounter in one of her books, and several high-ranking Republicans (Ken Mehlman and company) "decline" to openly state their heterosexuality.

Christians -- true Christians, that is -- are generally accepting of other religious beliefs; Bush has repeatedly shown his disdain for all but his fundamentalist born-again brethren (not that he actually does anything for them, of course; his only true loyalty is to his corporate sponsors). True Christians are pacifists; Bush, as the International Herald Tribune pointed out several weeks ago, "wants to rule the world", preferably by force of arms. True Christians assist those less fortunate than themselves; Bush's "charity" is restricted to the wealthy, while he guts social services spending for America's neediest. True Christians accept people for who they are; Bush and his sycophants got their knickers in a twist because a cartoon sponge might be gay.

Instead of true Christians, however, Bush has pseudo-Christians like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson in his corner.

Dobson is president of "Focus on the Family", a far-right religious group that pushes abstinence-only sex education, and believes (in effect) that women are nothing more than baby factories (and should be ecstatic with that status). Dobson is the one who said Bush "needs to be more aggressive" about pressing the religious right's pro-life, anti-gay rights agenda. He has compared the recent steps toward gay marriage to Pearl Harbor and likens the battle against it to D-Day. He is, of course, wholly in favor of completely outlawing abortion. He's also the one who started the "Spongebob is gay" brouhaha.

Falwell, a fundamentalist Baptist "hellfire and brimstone" preacher, was the founder of the "Moral Majority" (which was neither), and is best remembered for having blamed "abortionists", gays, feminists, and lesbians for the 2001 terror attacks. This quote is a perfect synopsis of his "thinking": "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." Falwell was also instrumental in the claims that "Tinky Winky" -- one of the "Teletubbies" -- was gay because the character was purple ("a color symbolic of homosexuality"), had an inverted triangle on his head and carried a handbag.

Robertson, who took over as host of "The 700 Club" after Jim Bakker (another hypocritical "Christian") had his little extra-marital fling, is the one who called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. He agreed with Falwell that the 9-11 attacks were caused by "pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU and the People for the American Way." One of his most memorable quotes: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist".

Then there's the entire so-called "Intelligent Design" crowd: the loonies who claim man coexisted with dinosaurs (I guess they use the Flintstones and early* Warner Brothers cartoons for proof). These are the cretins who claim "Intelligent Design" has nothing to do with religion -- then scream "religious discrimination" when they don't get their way.

Additionally, we have the fundie wingnuts who decry the progress of the last 100 years or so -- the ones who feel the Voting Rights Acts went too far, the ones who claim Brown v. Board of Education, Griswold v. Connecticut, and Roe v. Wade were the result of "activist" judges or "judicial dictatorship." These are the people who felt burning witches was perfectly acceptable. They're also not fond of Miranda, Escobedo, Gideon, Mapp, and the rest of the Supreme Court decisions that pointed out that even accused criminals have rights.

To put their hypocrisy in perspective, let's look briefly at one of the major tenets of Christianity, the Ten Commandments:

(1) Then God spoke all these words: (2) I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; (3) you shall have no other gods before me. (4) You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (5) You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, (6) but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (7) You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the LorSabbathnot acquit anyone who misuses his name. (8) Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. (9) Six days you shall labor and do all your work. (10) But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work: you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. (11) For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (12) Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (13) You shall not murder. (14) You shall not commit adultery. (15) You shall not steal. (16) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (17) You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
[Exodus 20:1-17]

Now, let's compare what the Commandments say with what the Administration does:

1. "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me... .."
   The Administration appears to be trying to elevate George W. Bush to the stature of at least Jesus, if not of God Himself. This may be seen in the oft-quoted phrase, "I have a God-given talent. I got it from my father." Bush has also be quoted as saying the Lord speaks directly to him. There is also the unspoken implication -- though not terribly thinly-veiled -- that to disagree with Bush is to agree with the "terrists" (and hence, the Devil).
2. "Do not make a sculpted image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above..."
   While it's not as widespread as pictures of the Pope in Catholic homes, a disturbing number of "the faithful" have portraits of Bush in places of honor. Some probably even have them in shrines. (Black velvet Bush, anyone?).
3. "Thou shalt not swear falsely by the name of the LORD..."
   This one is almost too easy. One need merely look at all the various Rethuglicans who have been nabbed for perjury (i.e., Scooter Libby, et al.), and at all the various ways Bush and company have violated their oaths to "support and preserve the Constitution"... the oaths all end with "So help me God."
4. "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy"
   Some of the most evil shenanigans of the Bushistas have been planned (or at least announced) on Sundays. Obviously, though, the administration did obey this one at least once: the Administration did absolutely nothing while the great city of New Orleans was drowning.
5. "Thou shalt honor your father and your mother..."
   Okay, I have to admit Bush does honor his father (or, more correctly, both of his fathers) and his mother. The fact that Mommy Bush is an evil, nasty, hardhearted shrew really has nothing to do with it (but it certainly should). I suppose one could argue that Dubya has dishonored his (temporal) father by beginning and continuing an invasion that Poppy realized was futile.
6. "Thou shalt not murder"
   Again, too easy: Carla Fay Tucker, 2,000+ American servicemen and women, God only knows how many Iraqis and Afghanis, not to mention 3,000+ in New Orleans, plus all the folks starving, freezing, or otherwise needlessly dying because Bush and his cronies don't give a rat's ass about anyone but themselves.
7. "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
   Since to the fundamentalist, there is no such thing as divorce, any self-proclaimed "Christian" who remarries is ipso facto an adulteror. I'm ignoring, of course, all the fundamentalist preachers who have been caught screwing women (usually children), to whom they are not married.
8. "Thou shalt not steal."
   This is not understood as stealing in the conventional sense, since theft of property is forbidden elsewhere and is not a capital offense. In this context it is to be taken as "do not kidnap." Even in this interpretation, the Bushistas lose: Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, and various PATRIOT Act provisions for "preventive detention".
9. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor"
   Yellowcake, Saddam's WMD's, Iraq's connection to (or direction of) the 9/11 attacks, etc..
10. "Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's house..."
    Iraq, Afghanistan (although one could argue Afghanistan was justified), and soon, Iran.

It should be obvious that, despite the lip service, the current administration has no respect whatsoever for the Ten Commandments. How, then, can they claim to be "Christian"?

They CAN'T.

Another Christian tenet often cited by the right-wing neofascists is the "Golden Rule": "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". How many of you think Bush, the heartless prick Cheney and the rest would feel if a Democratic administration -- especially under President Hillary Clinton-- were to use the "powers" "granted" to the President by the PATRIOT Act? No, to the Rethuglican crooks, it's "Do unto others before they do unto you". This, of course, could just be "institutional memory" handed down from their real Lord and liege, Tricky Dicky.



"REDNECK"

Bush tries to push his "aw, shucks" cowboy image, especially to the mouth-breathin', Bible-thumpin', hooker-humpin', sister-marryin', rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup crowd that he allegedly considers his "base".

Bush was born in Connecticut. In New Haven, if fact, which is home to Yale University. As I recall (from news stories, not personal knowledge), his family was living in the Greenwich area at the time. He was educated at Andover, Yale, and Harvard. He summered with his folks in Kennebunkport, Maine. He still vacations there, in fact. Not exactly your typical redneck/cowboy upbringing. He is, as the Pace commercial says, the guy "who gets his salsa from New York City".

Bush also likes to be shown "clearing brush" from his "ranch." Not unlike all those pictures of the displaced from New Orleans, and the various rescuers pressed into duty to accompany him, the brush-clearing pictures are nothing but carefully-staged photo opportunities for an all-too-gullible media. Bush's ranch is about as realistic as a "Cracker Barrel Country Store".

He feels that by mangling his words, and by trying -- unsuccessfully, by the way -- to adopt the "mush-mouthed Southern accent", he will be accepted as a "regular guy", the "guy you'd like to have a beer with." Given the records of Bush's outbursts when he was drunk (such as challenging his own father to go "mano a mano"), most people wouldn't want to run that risk.

Further, his pathetic attempts at typical Southern "glad-handing" are abject failures (just like all his other actions). He tries to express sympathy and solicitude; he demonstrates, however, only supercilious, smirking arrogance. A true Southerner would open his/her home to those displaced by Katrina (as many of them did, of course).

But for some reason, many of these attempts to simulate a "good ole boy" seem to be remarkably successful, at least among the trailer-trash crowd. That the slack-jawed, drooling "Deliverance" clones continue supporting him -- even though he has done NOTHING for them -- is truly remarkable, and just a little bit frightening.

Bush and his cadre also tend to support many of the causes near and dear to the redneck heart. First among these, of course, is the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

First of all, most rednecks manage to miss the first clause completely. Those that do spot it seem to function under the (mistaken) belief that "militia" refers to groups like the Michigan Militia, and the other right-wing extremist, racist, paramilitary groups that tend to spring up whenever three or more rednecks are in one place. These morons do not understand that the "militia" referenced in the Amendment is, in effect, the Colonial Army and its successors.

Second, the "arms" referred to were those used by military personnel for military purposes. The Bush "base" tends to claim that any type of armament may be kept by the average citizen, including assault and other automatic weapons.

Third, they (again) disregard the clear intent of the Framers when they claim a "Constitutional" right to use any weapon for any purpose whatsoever.

It is these people to whom Bush tries to suck up, by supporting the gutting of the Brady Law and other gun-control laws. They even want to remove the requirements for background checks (I guess because too many of the "base" wouldn't qualify for carrying a squirt gun after a real check).

Bush also tries to cuddle up to the Nascar crowd, even though the closest he ever came was trying to evade the Kennebunkport cops when he got bagged for drunk driving (and imagine how the neocons would howl if Hillary had concelaed a DWI...).

The reality is no matter how much Bush may want to be a "good ole boy" and no matter how hard he may try, he is nothing but a spoiled son of Yankee privilege.


"FOURTH REICH"

George Bush, Dickless Cheney and the rest of the Administration obviously have hopes of extending their iron-fisted control over America for the next thousand years, just as Hitler viewed his regime as the start of the original "Thousand Year Reich". Their established proclivity in stealing elections, purging the electoral rolls of "suspect" classes (blacks, Hispanics, and others who tend to vote Democratic), pushing for electronic voting machines that do not have "paper trail" capabilities, discovering precincts in which the number of votes cast (for Bush) is greater than the number of eligible voters (never mind the votes cast for Democrats in those same precincts), and so on, is well-know (see here, for instance).

The Chimpster and his gang are also using other well-known tactics of previous fascist regimes: silencing the media, harassing protesters, imprisoning members of opposition groups in violation of Constitutional requirements (and international law, in the case of "enemy combantants"), warrantless searches and seizures, secret courts, etc. Just recently, a brave (and probably soon to be out-of-office) Federal judge in Detroit ruled that the warrantless spying conducted by the NSA under Bush's self-proclaimed "plenipotentiary war powers" was unconstitutional.

The Administration's spurious claims of "national security" are too numerous to go into here (but see Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, AmericaBlog, Atrios, Digby, and countless others for the gruesome details).

In addition, much like Adolph Hitler did, George W. Bush is holding himself out as the only person capable of "saving the world". While we have not yet seen "Bush Youth", we have seen the loyalty oaths required for admission to taxpayer-funded Presidential appearances, we've seen Secret Service agents (and the initials "SS" are just as scary now as they were in the 30's and 40's) dragging "unauthorized" people out of these same taxpayer-funded appearances, we've seen Little Ricky "Man-on-Dog" Santorum using uniformed Delaware State Police officers to forcibly remove two teenagers from a book-signing at a Barnes and Noble store.

We've seen "free-speech zones", where protesters are kept far from the president, in clear violation of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech [...] or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."), these "free-speech zones" enforced by those who swore to uphold the Constitution.

In fact, the Administration's entire concept of the Constitution of the United States may be seen in this one quote from Dubya himself:

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a Goddamned piece of paper!"

[Source: Capitol Hill Blue, 12-09-05]

These are the people running (and ruining) our great country.

WE MUST VOTE THEM OUT OF OFFICE BEFORE THEY DESTROY US.

__________

* And I do mean "early". I'm thinking of that one -- pre-Loony Tunes -- of the caveman with the pet dinosaur; you know the one I mean: the caveman throws the stick and so on.

BP Censoring American Press

From AdAge, via This Century Sucks:

Days after financial services giant Morgan Stanley informed print publications that its ads must be automatically pulled from any edition containing "objectionable editorial coverage," global energy giant BP has adopted a similar press strategy.

Zero tolerance

According to a copy of a memo on the letterhead of BP's media-buying agency, WPP Group's MindShare, the global marketer has adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward negative editorial coverage. The memo cites a new BP policy document entitled "2005 BP Corporate-RFP" that demands that ad-accepting publications inform BP in advance of any news text or visuals they plan to publish that directly mention the company, a competitor or the oil-and-energy industry.

Gotta jes' love that freedom of the press...

So once again, we have the oil industry thinking that they have the God-given right to determine what is best for the rest of us. It was bad enough when Dickless Cheney allowed the energy industry to set the Chimpistration's energy policy (there's an oxymoron!). It was worse when Halliburton overcharged the taxpayers for services allegedly delivered to our brave (but badly misled) servicemen and servicewomen overseas.

Now they're saying, "If your magazine says anything nasty about us or our friends, we're gonna pull the advertising you need to survive."

They are demanding the right to censor the American press.

Sad thing is, the Bushistas will probably let them get away with it.

The Rude One and Bush's "Thought" Processes

The Rude Pundit, in his own inimitable way, takes on Dumbya's latest comments on terrists:

Here's the President yesterday at a campaign dinner for Tennessee Republicans: "We face an enemy that has an ideology; they believe things." You got that? We're not facing a bunch of blank slates lashing out at all tabulas not rasa. They actually believe "things." What sorts of things, you may ask? George W. Bush has the answer: "The best way to describe their ideology is to relate to you the fact that they think the opposite of the way we think."

Now, a cynical person might respond, "Oh, really? So they don't think that it's okay to hold people without charge or access to genuine legal processes, to torture them to get any information no matter how outdated or worthless, to lie to their people about the progress of a war, to use force to impose an ideology on the population?" You get the idea.

Go read the whole thing here. And read the post directly below, on the Rude One's visit to New Orleans.

And then wonder why Chimpster's approval rating is as high as it is. It should be in negative numbers. But the mouth-breathin', Bible-thumpin', hooker-humpin', sister-marryin', rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup neocon wingnut crowd still believe in him.

Whatta buncha fargin' MO-rons.

Catblogging Update

A couple of days ago, I introduced you to our certified pre-owned kitty, Tia.

Turns out "she" is a "he." The lovely yet talented Mrs 618 (who is experiencing the joys of recovering from surgery for a ganglion cyst and has her left hand in a cast) was watching "her" do some grooming when all of a sudden, she noticed... umm... a little "red rocket" action.

His name is now Joey. Not, I hope, after the idiot on "Friends".

And yes, we have both signed up for "Remedial Biology".

Our Lab is still female.

CERTs and Other Fun Things

I mentioned a while back that I recently became a trainer for Community Emergency Response Teams (or CERTs). I mention this for a reason.

The other day at work, an associate and I ran a training class on fire extinguisher usage for about 50 people at work. My associate -- also a CERT instructor -- used the PowerPoint presentation from the CERT curriculum.

After we all went outside and "played" (as he put it) for a couple of hours, I handed out course evaluations to the group.

We've already gotten back a couple that ask for the full CERT course to be given at work.

CERT, as you may know, was developed in Los Angeles, about 25 years ago. After one particularly devastating earthquake, the LAFD realized that the first "rescuers" on the scene were those who lived in the neighborhood. LAFD decided to develop and offer a program that would provide these initial responders the training they needed to (a) save lives, (b) protect property, (c) assist their neighborhoods, and (d) stabilize the situation until the professionals arrived, while still protecting the rescuers themselves. The training consists of basic firefighting skills (fire extinguishers), light search and rescue, basic disaster medical (first aid and CPR), triage, psychological response to disasters and sort of introductory terrorism.

The CERT concept has since been expanded into a specialized program for schools (a pilot here in Michigan was quite successful, even beyond the goals established when they set it up); the Federal Department of Homeland Security is also working on modifying the program for the workplace environment. (Pay attention, this may be the only nice thing I ever say about DHS). A CERT program in the workplace makes sense, in that during a major disaster, local emergency services will be overwhelmed (this is also the logic behind the 72-hour kits DHS recommends for the home). Suitably trained volunteer responders in the workplace will help keep their fellow workers safe, care for those who are injured, and also demonstrate the employer's commitment to staff safety. Of course, I suppose having a CERT team in the workplace might also reduce insurance rates somewhat.

Anyway, after I completed the instructor course, my immediate supervisors were a little doubtful about the interest in, or need for, a CERT team at work. Maybe the responses to the extinguisher training program will show the bosses that there is both a need and the interest.

Update, 09-04-06: Added link to CERT website, just in case anyone wants more information on the program.

'Nother New One for the Blogroll...

Anntichrist S. Coulter of BlondeSense now has her own blog. If you have read any of her writings, you will know that she is a very quiet, soft-spoken Southern belle.

Unfortunately, the poor lady has to stop keeping her feelings bottled up inside:

Maybe that's the solution to Houston. Maybe that's how we make everybody happy. Leave the Katrina evacuees the fuck alone and let them integrate into the city where they AREN'T the minority, and we take all of the fucking nouveau-riche-suburbanite-white-trash republicunt yuppie-scum cocksuckers and put 'em on a fucking ISLAND, where they can't poison the water table anymore.

Read the whole thing here.

Update (or should that be "Oopsdate"?), 09-02-06: I changed "uburbanite" back to "suburbanite", as per Annti's request. Guess I need new glasses.

More "Forward into the Past"

Our fine friends at the TSA are once again protecting us from the last "attack", instead of doing anything to protect us from the next one. We're all aware, by now, that as a result of the foiled terra plot in the UK (and our British cousins are quite pissed at Dubya and his cronies for making various statements that will make it difficult for the British to secure convictions), TSA has now banned most liquids, gels, and so on.

"Yeah," you ask, "but what can be done to protect us from the next attack? We don't know what they're gonna do, or when or how! We have to be lucky 100% of the time, they only have to be lucky once!"

Well, that's true, to a certain extent.

Several well-known security experts (like Bruce Schneier, whom I've cited before) have suggested using psychological profiling techniques (not racial or ethnic, psychological) to weed out potential troublemakers. El Al, the Israeli national airline, has been doing this for years. Their security people look for behaviors that indicate nervousness, fear, etc. It has worked out extremely well for them - there hasn't been a highjacking involving an El Al flight in something like 30 years.

The problems with applying such techniques here are significant, but not insurmountable:

• First, we have to ensure that the Bushistas, with their emphasis on the "A-rab menace", don't allow the screening criteria to deteriorate into racial/ethnic profiling;
• Second, we have to ensure that training contracts are given to appropriate, qualified companies. This does NOT include Bechtel, Carlisle, Halliburton, and the rest of the usual war profiteers;
• Third, it will require significant retraining for the TSA screeners (many of whom don't need to be in their jobs in the first place, but don't get me started on TSA'a half-assed screening of their own damned screeners). I doubt the TSA (or DHS or FBI, for that matter) has the expertise, resources, or even interest to make it successful;
• Fourth, the 60%+ of us who don't trust the administration will have to resist the (natural) impulse to jump on the first glitches -- and there will be some, inevitably -- and start screaming that once again, the Bushies have fucked up. I'm sure they will, mind you; that's as certain as Dumbya mangling more of the English language before he returns to life-long exile in Crawdad.

Even if we don't want to try to retrain everyone to look for signs of trouble (other than possession of nail clippers and Evian), there are some steps we can take to make life a lot safer a lot quicker:

• Force the chemical and energy industries off their collective asses and start making some serious progress in securing their respective facilities. Same thing with ports: fewer than 6% of the shipping containers coming into the US are inspected in any fashion. Chemical plant security is a joke: recent articles in the NY Times, for instance, showed open, unmanned gates into freight yards handling hazardous loads (no link cause I just have an undated clipping from the physical paper). Energy plants -- with the exception of nuclear facilities -- fare little better: your average coal-fired plant's perimeter is as porous as SpongeBob's fanny. Nuke plants are a little more secure, but, again, their training is seemingly geared towards the last threat.
• Enable effective and reliable communications between all levels of Federal, state and local law enforcement. As a former cop, I can tell you communication with the Feds is always one-way: we give, they take. despite the much-ballyhooed "fusion centers", etc., it's still almost impossible to get any useful info from a Fed. Don't believe me? Ask an FBI agent for the time; he'll put you through a full-blown security background check before he tells you. Don't bother asking a TSA staffer for the time, they don't have the faintest idea how to read a watch (although they can recognize and steal a Rolex in a heartbeat).
• REMOVE FEMA FROM DHS AND RE-ESTABLISH IT AS A SEPARATE ENTITY. When FEMA was a Cabinet-level agency (under the Clemis), they really did do "a hell of a job." Under Brownie, Skeletor, and company, they couldn't manage a baby pissing in it's diaper. James Lee Witt, the former FEMA director, should be cajoled/bribed/begged to come back and re-create the original, "real" FEMA.

More a little later.

Fascist Physician Fails, Fraud Found

Oh, the poor baby…

Emphasis added, of course.

Frist Failed to Fulfill a State Requirement for Medical License

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 (AP) — The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, did not meet all the requirements needed to keep his medical license active even though he gave paperwork to Tennessee officials indicating that he had, his office acknowledged Tuesday.

Tennessee requires its licensed physicians to complete 40 hours of continuing medical education every two years. Mr. Frist, a heart-lung surgeon, submitted a license renewal with the Tennessee Health Department stating he had fulfilled that requirement.

Responding Tuesday to repeated requests from The Associated Press, a Frist spokesman said the senator had contacted the Tennessee Board of Medical examiners and was working to clear up the problem.

“As a result of a change in Tennessee’s regulations several years after Dr. Frist came to the Senate, he may be required to complete additional continuing medical education hours,” the spokesman, Matt Lehigh, said in a statement. “A representative of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners has been contacted, and Dr. Frist will meet every requirement of the board.”

Mr. Frist, who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year to consider a presidential run in 2008, does not maintain a medical practice but routinely emphasizes his experience as a doctor.

Tennessee officials put the continuing education requirement in place in 2002. Starting with renewal applications filed in January 2005, the state required doctors to have completed 40 hours of continuing education in the two years that preceded their filing.

A renewal application that Mr. Frist filed with the medical examiners board this February specifically mentioned the continuing education requirement and was signed on his behalf by his accountant.

Mr. Lehigh said the senator might have been unaware of the change.

Tennessee law states that doctors who fail to do their continuing medical education “will be subject to disciplinary action.”

Let’s see if we have this straight: Herr Doktor Frist, one of Twig’s party of moral arbiters, not only failed to maintain his medical license in accordance with the laws of the State of Tennessee (and remember, the Rethuglicans stand for “law’n’order above all else”), but he also lied and said he had? And then his spokesdrone said Frist “might have been unaware of the change”?!? Since when is ignorance of the law an excuse... especially for Rethuglicans?

Excuse me, aren’t these the same clowns who keep claiming all their activities are 100% legal? Like the outing of Valerie Plame, and the NSA wiretapping, and the war on terra, and swearing in Rethuglican candidates before their elections have been certified by state authorities?

God, these people are truly disgusting.

Of course, given the fact that Tennessee needs Frist, they'll probably accept his "kitten vivisection" projects as continuing medical edjamacation.

Just To PROVE I'm Back...

An admittedly much-belated cat-n-dog post...

A few days ago, the lovely yet talented Mrs 618 and I got back from a trip, and found the neighbor's cats on our doorstep, hanging around, looking for food (of course).

Except one cat wasn't the neighbor's. She was a stray who happened upon the scene.

Needless to say, we now have a new-to-us, certified pre-owned cat, Tia.



You might notice a certain similarity between Tia and her predecessor, Jenna:


This could be the start of a pattern... except there's me:
(And I wonder why I can never get into Dumbya's appearances...)

Of course, Emily thought she was all done with "those creatures". She saw Tia and gave me one of "those" looks:


"Aww, Dad, why's ya hafta go and do that?!?"

THIS Time, I'm Back!

Well, okay, maybe this time I’m back.

First, a few housekeeping chores:

• Check out this new blog, Conservatard. He’s extremely well-spoken, a gifted writer, and – unlike me – he can generally keep a civil tongue in his head when he’s discussing those Bible-thumpin’, hooker-humpin’, rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup neocon wingnuts, those slack-jawed drooling idiots who keep so many bloggers in Cheetohs and Mountain Dew.

• The blogger formerly known as Angry Chowder seems to have sorta more-or-less permanently hung up his spurs. On t’other hand, he has a guest post up at Conservatard (our blogroll has been updated accordingly).

And now for some further info on the brand-spankin’ new 618Rants World Headquarters. You might recall from my last post (immediately below) that the lovely yet talented Mrs.618 and I moved to luxurious new digs:



You may not, however, be aware of all that goes on behind the scenes at this amazing blog. Our newsroom, a state-of-the-art facility, is staffed 24-7, by a highly-trained cadre of dedicated reporters:



Once the items for our posts are gathered, edited, and vetted for accuracy, they are sent to our main control facility, where they are prepared for posting:



When everything is set to go, posts are uploaded to Blogger, using more state-of-the-art technology:



From there, it is delivered directly to you, as hot and fresh as a Domino's pizz--- err, bad analogy…. Hot and fresh, we’ll leave it at that.

I'm Baaaaaack!

First of all, an apology: I haven't posted since late April, but there are some feeble excuses I can offer.

• First, both the lovely-yet-talented Mrs 618 and I needed some time to recover from having to have the cat euthanized.
• Second, I've been working many, many hours... and insane hours to boot (insane in the sense of an average of two first aid classes per week, on top of my regular duties).
• Third, I spent three days becoming an instructor for Community Emergency Response Teams (or CERTs) -- a program where neighbors are trained to help neighbors after an emergency.
• Fourth, we moved to new digs, and you all know how much fun that is.
• Fifth, the lavish new 618Rants World Headquarters is far enough out of town that we cannot get DSL... or even cable TV. As a result, I've been stuck with dial-up, and our neighborhood has such old phone lines, the best speed I've gotten was 14.4K... usually I was lucky to get 9600. I've been trying to figure how to get the lovely-yet-talented one to let me get satellite Internets ($399 for the dish, $199 installation and $60 a month). And -- of course -- Blogger doesn't play well with dial-up.

The NEW 618Rants World Headquarters Building*

Anyway, what all this boils down to is that I just plain haven't had time to eat or sleep, never mind the little luxuries like having a life or even blogging.

Onto More Pressing Matters:

The multi-faceted, multi-talented Dark Wraith, in a comment (12th in the list) to this post at BlondeSense, suggests turning the Rovian campaign tactics on Joe Lieberman. BlondeSense contributor Jersey Cynic suggested drafting DW as a political strategist; at first, I agreed.

But now, I have an even better idea. I mean, even for me, this is friggin' brilliant.

Draft the Dark Wraith as our candidate for President.

The Wraith describes himself thusly:

...a college teacher and writer who specializes in economics, finance, mathematics, business administration, computer hardware and software skills, and English grammar and composition.

Obviously, these skills are not evident in the current administration. As I pointed out in a subsequent comment, "[a]fter all, those fields are scientific and reality-based, whereas we are dealing with the administration that takes pride in the fact that they make their own 'reality'".

Wouldn't it be nice to replace Dubya, Cheney, Dumsfeld, et al., with someone with actual intelligence?

* Not shown: the revolving time-and-temperature water tower.

In Memoriam: Jenna, 1992-2006

It’s not been a good day today around the Rants household. Our 14-year-old cat Jenna crossed the rainbow bridge this afternoon, to the place where she could be free of the pain that has been afflicting her.

My lovely yet talented wife (and I was using the phrase long before Tbogg) got Jenna when she was just a kitten. A friend called the missus (who was not yet a missus, of course) and said two stray kittens had followed him home, and he didn’t know what to do. Jason couldn’t keep them because he already had two cats. The future missus suggested that he call another friend, who promptly adopted both kittens. The missus went to visit this friend a couple of days later… and came home with Jenna.

Despite my being a dog person, even I could tell Jenna was a sweet cat, even though I met her late in life when she was already well past her prime.

I don’t think Jenna ever really forgave mommy for bringing home “that stray human” back in 2003 (when we got married), and I know she never forgave me for bringing home Emily (the Labrador). Every once in a while, though, Jenna would deign to sit in my lap (usually when I was trying to work on the computer or read), and would allow me to administer a “bilateral four-knuckle neck rub.”

Those of us who are lucky enough to share a life with a non-human-American should take a little extra time and give our companions a little extra love. Remember that pets love their humans unconditionally (well, at least dogs do; cats are a different matter). We owe it to them to make their lives as comfortable as possible.

If any of my 3-4 readers would like to share memories of their pets, please feel free to do so.

Surveillance Convergence

Scott Baltic, the editor of Homeland Protection Professional magazine, has an editorial in the current issue [no link, paid subscription required] that discusses the convergence of public and private surveillance efforts. Baltic cites the following example of what happens when the two sectors work together in, perhaps, unanticipated ways:

Say you just put some gas into the minivan you rented, but suddenly your credit card doesn’t work. Turns out that the rental company (which was monitoring your driving) fined you three times for speeding and instantly put the fines ($450 worth) on your card, which is now over its limit.

Yes, that really happened, and according to the fine print on the rental contract (you know, that stuff none of us ever reads), it was legal.

[snip]

The system that has already grown up, [Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr] said, is “very secret and hard to hold to account,” largely because it’s being driven by the information and marketing industries, which tend to be little regulated.

[snip]

[O’Harrow] also noted there’s no evidence that any terrorists have been caught through increased domestic surveillance.

Baltic echoes O’Harrow’s comments about the lack of public debate on these issues.

Not that there’s been a lack of debate about surveillance: writers across the political spectrum have been going on and on about various surveillance issues (especially the brouhaha over preznit’s use of the NSA to spy on all of us). I think Baltic’s point (and O’Harrow’s, for that matter) might be that some of the more esoteric dangers may be getting lost in the bigger picture.

Baltic cites one information source that many people don’t think about – tollway passes like EZ-Pass. When I was a teenager in Connecticut in the 70’s, we had paper toll tickets we could use (at a hefty discount) on the Conn. Turnpike. Although the tickets were numbered, nobody ever tracked the purchasers, so one could pretty much travel anonymously. The state then instituted a system of toll plates for use on the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways. These plates were purchased (again at a hefty discount) from the Department of Motor Vehicles, and allowed the operator to pass through the toll plazas without stopping, but all the driver’s information was on file with DMV; however, the individual toll plazas did not record each passage of a specific vehicle.

EZ-Pass, however, being computer-driven, creates a permanent record of when and where every EZ-Pass comes within range of a reader. We’ve probably all seen various episodes of “Law and Order” where detectives pull a suspect’s EZ-Pass records to prove he/she was in the area of the murder. EZ-Pass is accepted in 11 states (basically everything north and east of Virginia, plus Illinois); that means – if you have EZ-Pass – that your vehicle can be pinpointed as to date, time, and location, any time you are on a toll road in any of those states.

If this information is coupled with, say, credit or debit card records, or customer-loyalty cards from your supermarket, the resulting aggregation of data is astounding. Throw the records from your GPS or OnStar service into the mix, and give up any thoughts you might have about privacy when you travel.

Couple this with the recent disclosures about the NSA, and previous issues with the so-called “PATRIOT Act”, and it becomes obvious that not only is Big Brother here, he’s here to stay. And when you consider that Big Brother is personified by Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, et al., you should be afraid. You should be very afraid.

All these various surveillance techniques and programs are being pitched as efforts to “fight terrorism”, yet as O’Harrow points out, no terrorists have been caught as a result.

Security expert Bruce Schneier, whom I’ve quoted before, has additional commentary on surveillance issues in his Crypto-Gram newsletter.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

DOJ and NSA Strike (Out) Yet Again......

"I'm article the eighth I am, article the eighth I am, I am..."

Associated Press is reporting that NSA may have monitored otherwise-privileged calls between patients and doctors or lawyers and clients, according to the Department of Injustice. Not only that, the government is claiming there appears to be no legal barrier against using this evidence in criminal cases. This is based, of course, on the administration's claim that the warrantless spying "does not violate the Fourth Amendment".

"Although the program does not specifically target the communications of attorneys or physicians, calls involving such persons would not be categorically excluded from interception," the department said.

The government goes on the "explain" that the same "general criteria" would apply to doctors' and lawyers' calls as to all other calls monitored under the program: there must be "reason to believe" one party is linked to al Qaeda. Trouble is the administration has been monitoring calls "related to terrorism", not just those involving al Qaeda. And since the administration has been claiming for quite a while now that anyone who doesn't support preznit supports terrorists, there's nothing to keep them from spying on "terrorists" whose only "offense" is not worshipping at the altar of preznit.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers also complains about Justice's evasiveness in answering questions from his committee. "All but two of 45 answers to the House Judiciary Democrats were vague and unresponsive."

"We assure you, however, that the department keeps the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court fully informed regarding information that is relevant to the FISA process..."

This is not all that reassuring, in that the administration has made it abundantly clear that whatever spying the NSA is doing doesn't fall under the purview of the FISA court. They haven't told the FISA judges squat about the program.

The department also avoided questions on whether the administration believes it is legal to wiretap purely domestic calls without a warrant, when al-Qaida activity is suspected. The department wouldn't say specifically that it hasn't been done.

"Interception of the content of domestic communications would present a different legal question," the department said.

Great.

Another question the bastards are ducking.

ITMFA

DOE Strikes (Out)

Part Seven... this is getting to be as long as the list of preznit's vocal blunders...

The Department of Energy has managed to misplace at least 18 pieces of computer equipment. That's bad enough, except these pieces came from their "Office of Intelligance" (nah, I'm not going to say it... some comments don't have to be written), and may have contained classified information. Like security procedures for nuke plants, f'rinstance.

Additionally, more than 200 pieces of "sensitive" property had not been entered into DOE's inventory, and DOE had not reported missing sensitive property to their own security department.

Can anybody in the Bush administration do anything right?!?

I didn't think so.

The NRC Strikes (Out)

Yeah, Part SIX...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is investigating a leak of tritium that occurred at the Indian Point nuke plant in New York. Officials believe the leak originated in the spent-fuel pools.

The nuclear power industry, of course, would prefer that the investigation go away. Safety costs money, after all... and that money could be better spent in executive bonuses.

Or should that be bonii?

Want some info on tritium? Read Tom Clancy's Sum of All Fears.

Here’s our Deal. Are you listening Democratic Congress People?

Pissed Off Patricia posted this open letter this morning. It's reprinted here with her kind permission.

As usual, she has hit the nail on the head.

_____

Dear every Democratic congress person who doesn’t support Senator Feingold’s call for censure.

Why the hell not? Why are you afraid to step up?

Are you afraid it will make you look weak on defense? Forget that, because there is so much more at stake here than appearances. We’re talking about the future of our country. We’re talking about the rights that the Constitution promises the citizens of the United States. See? We don’t give a damn about how you look, we do give a damn about what soldiers have fought and died for in previous wars. They died so that we could be free and live in a democracy. Those were brave people who were willing to give their lives. Aren’t you brave enough to step up now for the same cause?

For god’s sake stand up, admit you trusted the word of the President of the United States when you voted to support the war but now you see that you were misled. Damn, how hard is that? Others have done it, why can’t you?

We aren’t buying your mantra of having to look into whether the wiretaps were legal. You know they weren’t. We know they weren’t. The president hid the program because he knew they weren’t. Are you willing to give this president who fooled you into supporting this disastrous war any and every authority he wants? Even after he has made you look foolish, you still support what he’s doing? Have you lost your mind? Don’t you see the danger here? Don’t you understand what the hell this will do for his authority?

To borrow a line from this president, when you step up, we’ll stand down. We mean it. When you step up and support Senator Feingold’s call for censure, we’ll shut up. But for now we aren’t going away. Well, if you don’t step up, we will go away from you at the voting booth. But, for now we’re going to keep on bugging you. And I don’t mean in an NSA sort of way. We adhere to the laws of our country. We respect your privacy so we’re going to talk to you in public and we’ll talk loud.

Karl Rove has his little word out now that you guys are “angry”. Rove has no idea how angry we are because you guys aren’t angrier. For heavens sake, you have every reason to be mad as hell. In fact I can give you over 2300 flagged draped coffin reasons. We are at war because someone cooked the intelligence, sexed it up, and it was force fed to you. That doesn’t make you angry?

What’s more important, your reelection or the future of our country? We know, do you? One day you will be gone from the political arena but you have a chance today to do something that will change the outlook for future generations. You can do something that will take our country back from lawlessness to a country of laws that apply to all its citizens. Don’t you owe your kids and their kids that much? Isn’t it time to be statesmen and women instead of just politicians?

So here’s our deal. You support Sen. Feingold and on election day and we’ll support you. If you don’t support him, then you might as well change your party affiliation. What you’re telling us is that you are more concerned about protecting yourself than you are about protecting the Constitution. That sure says a lot.

_____

Many of her commenters have said they're going to print this out and mail it to their Congresscritters.

Sounds good to me!

The Times, They Are A-Changin'...

I saw on Yahoo tonight that one Florida county has dropped additional charges against former teacher Debra Lafave (charges from an earlier trial in another county resulted in a well-publicized conviction).

This is Debra Lafave:



This is how I remember my teachers:




As the Great American Philosopher Rodney Dangerfield once said, "It ain't easy bein' me."

A Public Service Announcement...

Since it’s a well-known fact that all the senior executives of all of the “Fortune 500” companies are regular readers of this blog [koff-koff-bullshit-koff], it is worthwhile pointing out the fact that due to improvements in workplace security postures, executives’ private residences are becoming more tempting targets for the bad guys.

Hence, these suggestions:

• Get an unlisted phone number


• Use a P.O. box (or a private mailbox service) to receive personal mail


• Vary your routes to and from work on a daily basis


• Install an alarm system and motion-sensor lights


• Keep doors and windows locked at all times


• Report suspicious persons and encourage your neighbors to do the same


• Never admit solicitors or strangers into your home


• Make sure your home’s floor plan is not on the Web (builder’s website, or real estate agency)


• Develop and practice a security plan and emergency procedures with all members of the household

These steps are equally valid for single women.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Internets.

TSA Strikes (Out) Yet Again!

Part Five of the never-ending saga of those being “driven into shrill unholy madness by the incompetence, mendacity, and sheer disconnection from reality of the George W. Bush administration”… [™ Shrillblog]

James Bennett, president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, said “the current system of screening checked baggage at our two airports, which is solely and exclusively the responsibility of the federal government, is not capable of meeting the current demand, is operationally inefficient, consumes an inordinate amount of Transportation Security Administration resources and is incapable of meeting the projected demand for our airports.” [emphasis added]

Way to go, guys. Do what you gotta do to keep TSA, and by extension, DHS, the most inefficient, ineffectual agencies in the whole goddamned government, while still managing to waste billions of taxpayer dollars.

These are the people who grab grandmothers with toenail clippers in the bottom of a 40-pound carry-on, but can’t manage to locate bomb-making materials in checked baggage, because they’re too busy ripping off the traveling public.

TSA Stikes (Out) Again

Part four… this is getting to be like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe*…

I’ve written – disparagingly – about the TSA in the past. The Transportation Security Administration was formed after the 9-11 terrorist attacks to centralize airline passenger screening under Federal auspices, instead of the then-current system of having each airline contract out its screening operations.

At first, I was in favor of the concept. Having been in the security profession for 25 years, I was well-aware of the realities of airline security. With the much-publicized financial woes of many of the airlines, it was inevitable that “loss-centers” like security would be shorted in favor of federally-mandated programs like maintenance or “profit centers” like maintaining flight frequencies. For most airlines, the purchasing department, not security experts, were in charge of selecting a security contractor to provide screening services. Since the purchasing people usually had little or no knowledge of security (other than having to wear their ID badges at work), it wasn’t surprising that most bids were awarded solely on the basis of cost. The problem is that security services should not be purchased on the basis of the lowest bid: you get what you pay for. If an airline receives bids from two security contractors, one at $15.00 per man-hour and the other at $20.00, the airline would usually go for the $15-an-hour company. Usually, one-half of the per-man-hour cost is the salary for the employee, while the other half is corporate overhead (recruiting, uniforms, background checks, benefits administration, etc.) and profit. This means the winning company pays its employees about $7.50 per hour, while the losing company pays $10.00. Do you think maybe you might get a higher-caliber person for $10 than you would for $7.50?

One of the biggest problems with the contract security industry is that in order to maintain “reasonable” profits, the companies have to minimize expenses… and the expenses that tend to be minimized are salaries for the line officers, training, equipment, and benefits (corporate bigwigs, of course, get excellent salaries and bennies). This, in turn, leads to high employee turn-over. Industry figures I’ve seen indicate a 400% annual turnover in rank-and-file staff. Yes, 400% annually… that means a completely new work force every three months. Of course, it’s not quite that bad – some people leave company A to work for company B, move onto C and so on, but this constant turn-over increases the employer’s costs, which results in even less money available for salaries for the troops. The artificially-low pay scales resulted in two types of employees: part-timers (whose main loyalty, obviously, was to their full-time job, which was usually not security-related) and those who could not get better jobs (like flipping burgers at McDonalds). Either way, the public suffered, even if they didn’t realize it.

Additionally, the lack of standardized training requirements – hell, the lack of any training requirements in many states – led to tremendously unqualified people performing critical functions. Often, screeners would have – at most – an hour or two of training, with just the most basic rudiments of what they were seeing on the screen. The screeners – because of their insufficient training – often could not distinguish between objects that pose a legitimate threat and those that don’t.

That’s why I was so hopeful about TSA in the early days. A Federal takeover of screening would have relieved the airlines of one significant expense (thereby hopefully allowing them to devote that money to maintenance), while at the same time providing screeners with a living wage (originally, the annual wage for entry-level screeners was to be about $40k), and allowing realistic system-wide training standards.

Of course, as is always the case with BushCo initiatives, the idea didn’t quite work out that way. First, the feds cut the pay scales back, almost to the pittance the private-sector screeners were making (about $17K, and try living on that!). Then, the feds removed many employment safeguards, like Civil Service protections, the right to engage in collective bargaining, and so on.

As a result, we have seen several hundred TSA screeners arrested and charged with stealing from airline passengers, both in the security screening lines, and from checked baggage. We’ve seen complaints of other illegal behaviors, including alcohol and drug use at work, harassment, racial profiling, and so on. We’ve seen arrogance coupled with incompetence, and stupidity coupled with authority.

Now, the GAO – Government Accountability Office – has compiled a classified report showing that federal investigators were able to carry bomb-making materials past screeners at 21 airports. Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening precautions, no one discovered the materials.

Recipes for homemade bombs are readily available on the Internet, and the ingredients are all available over the counter, so it’s not like this is some far-fetched scenario.

With the advent of hardened cockpit doors, and (admittedly) half-assed screening at check-in, experts say that explosives are now the biggest threat from terrorists targeting airliners.

But the screeners can’t spot the materials, even in extra-scrutiny situations. Yet these are the same people who can find a pair of toenail clippers in a woman’s carry-on suitcase.

Security expert Bruce Schneier, whom I’ve quoted before, points out that TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, spend most of their time “preparing for the last attack”: after 9-11, all emphasis was on aircraft security; after the Madrid and London bombings, emphasis shifted to commuter transit.

For some bizarre reason, TSA and DHS seem to be unable to think outside the box; they’ve expressed little interest in securing segments of the critical infrastructure that have not yet been attacked, but that have obvious and well-publicized security short-comings, like chemical and power plants. Nor has there been a concerted effort to prepare for a possible (or, some say, inevitable) bird flu outbreak, other than the Department of Health and Human Services advising Americans to stockpile canned tuna and powdered milk (the “duct tape and plastic sheeting” school of emergency preparedness). And of course we all know how well another DHS component, FEMA, fared in responding to Hurricane Katrina.

Part of the problem with DHS is the tendency to concentrate on the “sexier” parts of their mandate, like terrorism, and neglect the more mundane aspects like disaster preparedness. It is this misplaced emphasis that eliminated FEMA as a separate Cabinet-level agency, that gutted the training and preparedness activities, and directly resulted in such fiascos as Katrina.

The same misplaced emphasis has resulted in allegedly professional screeners who needlessly risk our lives and who can’t successfully perform their job functions.

___

* For those who aren't familiar with the series, it is a five-volume comedic/science fiction trilogy by the late Douglas Adams.

From the "Big Brother Is Watching" Dept.

A company in Ohio, CityWatcher.com, a provider of security cameras and Internet digital video storage, has reportedly taken RFID – radio frequency identification, those little tags on CD’s and DVD’s that make us so crazy at WallyWorld – to the next level by implanting a couple of employees with the chips for the purpose of access control.

I don’t really mind micro-chipping our Labrador so we can get her back if she strays, but y’all AIN’T gonna microchip me. Especially not for work purposes. Those things are too easy to trace.

Plus, of course, I remember Michael Crichton’s novel, The Terminal Man.

HHS Strikes (Out)

Okay, here we go with Part Three. My God, will it never end?

The Department of Health and Human Services, taking a page from the DHS playbook, is advising citizens to stockpile canned tuna and powdered milk, in case of (what some experts say is an inevitable) outbreak of bird flu.

Granted, HHS has a valid point (surprising, ain’t it?) that families should be prepared for emergencies, by stockpiling at least one week’s worth of food, water, and medical, emergency and sanitary supplies. [The Red Cross has a list of recommended emergency kit contents], but still, wouldn’t it make more sense for the government to try to do something to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of an outbreak?

Course, nothing like that’s going to happen till Halliburton gets a license to manufacture TamiFlu.

Ministry of Homeland Insecurity Strikes (Out) Again

In Part Two of what seems to be becoming a seemingly endless series…

The WaPo reports that “Heckuvajob” Brownie “purposely and admittedly” avoided communicating with his boss, DHS Secretary Michael “Skeletor” Chertoff after Katrina hit NOLA. He also purposely ignored the National Response Plan – the “master plan” for disaster response.

The report of the House panel investigating the fiasco also said that Brown’s actions cost the United States “an opportunity to determine whether the NRP worked.” Of course, given the fact that the NRP was developed under preznit’s watch, it’s pretty much a given that it would have failed miserably anyway.

The report also criticized Brownie for not advising Skeletor of the steps he should take under the NRP. As a former (state) government employee, however, I can tell you that part of the report is unfair to Brown. We’ve already seen countless examples of what happens when people try to tell preznit’s butt-boys how to do their jobs. I don’t blame Brownie for keeping his mouth shut on that one.

As I said in my previous post, picking the worst agency is a real crap-shoot… but I guess DHS wins, hands down.

Dept of Injustice Strikes (Out) Again

Last week, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that the Department of Injustice cannot call a handful of witnesses in the death-penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, because the gummint flat-out ignored her orders that the witnesses not be coached, as well as two other “major instances of misbehavior” by the prosecution.

The officials were to provide a pillar of the Injustice Department’s argument as to why Moussaoui deserved to die: that had he told investigators when he was arrested on immigration violations three weeks before the 9-11 attacks about al Qaeda’s plans to fly planes into buildings, the Federal Aviation Administration would have put in place security measures that could have prevented the attacks.

These would, presumably, be the same security measures preznit declined to put in place after the August PDB, and also the same measures that the FBI failed to take after being told of Arab flight students who didn’t want to learn landings and take-offs, only in-flight procedures.  As one novelist put it, “The first rule of aviation is to keep the number of take-offs equal to the number of landings.”  It shouldn’t take a Mensa member to maybe smell a rat when a “pilot” didn’t want to learn to land.

The surprising thing is that Judge Brinkema did not completely rule out the death penalty for Moussaoui, as some commentators thought she would.  Three major violations should have been enough to show a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct, but the judge seems to be willing to let the case continue, albeit without the “critical” FAA witnesses.  She did say, however, that the government’s case was “too riddled with errors” to proceed without some sanction against the government.

It’s getting harder and harder to decide which part of preznit’s assministration is the most corrupt and/or incompetent, but the Department of Injustice ranks right up, due in large part to Asscroft and Abu Al Gonzales.

A "Yerpan" View of Preznit

Today’s edition of the International Herald Tribune has an op-ed piece by William Pfaff that is well worth the read. It’s called “If Bush ruled the world” and has these salient comments on preznit [emphasis added]:

• “Intellectual poverty is the most striking quality of the Bush administration’s new National Security Strategy statement…”


• “The statement's only visible purpose is to address a further threat to Iran, as its predecessor, in 2002, threatened Iraq. The only actual "strategy" that can be deduced from it is that the Bush administration wishes to rule the world. The document is nonsensical in content, insulting to other nations and unachievable in declared intention.”


• The document's foreign readers will have two reactions. The first will be that it can't be serious. The second will be that it has to be taken seriously since these people have spent three ruinous years in a futile effort to control Iraq; they must be assumed capable of doing the same thing again to Iran.


• “… the effort in Iraq has been worth it because now "tyrants know that they pursue weapons of mass destruction at their own peril." (One has also learned that those who pursue nonexistent weapons of mass destruction also do so at their peril.)”

All in all, the piece is a pretty damning indictment of preznit’s so-called “foreign policy”, especially coming from a newspaper that is widely regarded in “Yerp” as an authentic voice of America.

Full disclosure statement: I have a warm spot for the Trib, as my father worked there before the “domestic” edition folded in the newspaper strike in the 60’s. The IHT had been a joint effort of the NY Times and the Washington Post, before the Times bought out the whole thing.

The Further Adventures of Felafel-Boy

The blotchy-faced, morally-leprous, walking-talking anal wart himself, Bill O’Lielly, is at it again. You can always count on falafel-boy to be crude, tasteless, and generally an ass.

O’Lielly’s fans recall with fondness his offer to the terrorists for a free pass if they bomb San Francisco. And who could ever forget those sweet little nothings he whispered in his staffers’ ears?

According to an article in the upcoming New Yorker, the twit has continued his criminal ways:

• He threatened a caller with “a little visit” from “Fox security”… and since when has Fox security had any jurisdiction anywhere? As a security professional, I can tell you security personnel have no more legal authority than you or I.


• He threatened NY Times columnist Frank Rich and editor Bill Keller, saying “we’ll just have to get into their lives”.


• He advocated the murder of LA Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley, saying “…until they grab Michael Kinsley out of his little house and they cut his head off”.

His “thriller”, Those Who Trespass – described by the New Yorker as a “revenge fantasy” – steals a scene from John D. MacDonald’s “Travis McGee” novel A Tan and Sandy Silence.

God, what a retard.

The NRA and "Forced Entry" Laws

I was cruising the Internets the other evening, doing some research, when I ran across this report on the website for The Brady Center for the Prevention of Handgun Violence. I figured with a title like Forced Entry: The National Rifle Association’s Campaign To Force Businesses To Accept Guns At Work, I could probably guess the gist of the report.

I was wrong.

The report is much more sobering than the title indicates.

The report details the (unfortunately successful) effort by the NRA – the organization that supports hunting squirrels with a 50-caliber machine gun and arming Vice Presidents – to push a bill through the Oklahoma state legislature that makes it a crime – a crime, with prison and fines and everything – for:

[…] anyone—“person, property owner, tenant, employer, or business entity”—to bar any person, except a convicted felon, from bringing a gun onto any property in Oklahoma that is “set aside for any motor vehicle.” [Citations omitted]

As the legal beagles say, let’s examine the “elements” of this law:

• person, property owner, tenant, employer, or business entity: this pretty much covers anyone who might be in control of any real estate


• to bar any person, except a convicted felon: this would mean that disgruntled ex-employees, abusive spouses, angry customers or neighbors, whackos, weirdos, drunks, junkies, psychopaths, etc., as long as they have not been convicted of a felony


• from bringing a gun onto any property: this means your home, store, business, playground, church, bar, hospital, nuclear plant, courthouse, prison (!), day care center, etc.


• set aside for any motor vehicle: basically, anyplace with a driveway or parking lot… or anywhere an ATV, snowmobile, or off-road vehicle could get to.

Additionally,

In addition to making violators subject to criminal penalties, the NRA-backed forced-entry statute provides individuals with a right of action to sue persons,
property owners, tenants, employers or businesses to force them to accept guns into any place set aside for motor vehicles and collect court costs and attorneys fees if they prevail. [Citations omitted]

In other words, if you tell some yahoo he can’t bring his gun onto your private property, YOU go to jail, YOU get fined, YOU get sued, YOU have to pay HIS legal expenses.

Notice there is no requirement that the person have a Carry Concealed Weapons (CCW) permit. The only restriction is that he not be a convicted felon.

Notice, also, there is no restriction on the number or type(s) of guns the yahoo can bring onto your private property: assault weapons, sniper rifles, heavy machine guns… anything the mope wants to bring with him.

The only requirement is that the weapon(s) be locked in a motor vehicle.

The Brady Center refers to this travesty as a “Forced Entry” law.

The NRA “rationalizes” this by saying people would be better able to protect themselves if they had ready access to firearms. I fail to see how having a .45 locked outside in your car is going to protect you from some whacko roaming around inside with a 12-guage.

Obviously, the NRA isn’t content with “just” having guns in the parking areas. No, this is just the first step toward their eventual goal: extending the “forced entry” law(s) to allow guns inside all buildings.

Of course, a number of companies – including ConocoPhillips and Securitas Security Services (which provides armed security guards) – and other organizations filed suit to block the law. Some of the organizations are ASIS International (the American Society for Industrial Security) and the Society of Human Resource Management. In retaliation, the NRA has launched a boycott of these companies and organizations.

Aside from the obvious safety and security concerns, there are many other factors to be taken into consideration.

• The Oklahoma law may violate the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution: “No person shall […] be deprived of life, limb, or property, without due process of law[…]”. A reasonable argument could be made that the law deprives the property owner of his ownership rights, by requiring the owner to admit persons he would otherwise bar from his premises.


• The Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process” clauses may also be violated: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” In effect, the property owner is deprived of equal protection of the law.


• The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) obligates “each employer [to] furnish to each of his employees … a place of employment which [is] free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.” Certainly getting shot would qualify as “serious physical harm”.


• Employers have a generally-recognized right to set basic work rules and regulations. The Oklahoma law appears to be in conflict with this right.

These “forced entry” laws put employers in the untenable position of having to provide a safe workplace, while being legally banned from prohibiting guns in the workplace.

It’s no secret that incidents of workplace violence are increasing. Logic would dictate that workplace homicides – the vast majority of which are committed with guns – could be reduced by widening the prohibition of guns in the workplace and by tightening the requirements for buying and carrying them.

But the nutcases at the NRA don’t agree. They want every drunk, mouth-breathin’, Bible-thumpin’, hooker-humpin’, sister-marryin’, rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup neocon wingnut to carry his piece wherever he goes.

Various News Notes From the Past Week

In no particular order, here are some odds and ends (and my commentary on them) from the Internets.

• Gas stations are using zip codes to help reduce credit card fraud. The theory is that the customer provides his or her zip code when making a purchase; if it matches the bank records, the customer is good to go. If the zip codes don't match, well, the sale isn't authorized.

This is actually a pretty good idea... if it is implimented properly. The trouble will be getting the oil companies to reprogram their systems to ask for zip codes. Anything that reduces credit/debit card fraud is helpful

• Cops are starting to recover more hotel key-cards... with customer's bank data encoded in the magnetic stripe. Thieves retrieve the cards after their discarded by hotels (since they're single-use). The bad guys then encode bank data (which they buy or acquire elsewhere) onto the cards. The key-cards are then used in fraudulent sales transactions at places like gas stations (where the clerks don't actually handle the cards).

One more reason to watch your personal information. And maybe to hang onto your hotel key-card. Note that the card, as issued by the hotel, does NOT include any of your personal information. The cards are re-encoded by the criminals.

• The idiots at DHS gave the town of Dillingham, Alaska (population 2459), $202,000 to buy 80 surveillance cameras. The police chief said the cameras could stop terrorism in southwest Alaska.

That's one camera for every thirty residents. To show what a tempting target Dillingham would be, here's a map showing Dillingham, and its relation to strategic national assets. Would Senator Ted ("Multi-Million Dollar Bridge to Nowhere") Stevens have had anything to do with this?

• US oil supplies jump to seven-year high, according to a Reuters headline.

Umm, weren't the oil companies citing declining supplies as justification for boosting the prices over $3.00 a gallon recently?

Shout-out to the Red Cross

According to Site Meter, I've been getting a lot of hits today from various Red Cross units around the country.

Welcome, folks!

I'm proud and honored to have been a volunteer first aid/CPR instructor for various chapters going back to 1990.

Kick back, grab a coffee and enjoy your visit.

I tend to write a lot about the Red Cross, so feel free to drop by any time, day or night. Like you, I'm always open.

Lions and Tigers and Bears... So To Speak.

Well, things have settled down a bit. Sorta. According to the National Weather Service, the area where I live (about an hour from Detroit) is looking at high wind advisories till midnight or so, and a tornado watch for the next couple of hours.

Fortunately, the only tornadoes I've ever dealt with "up close and personal" are the ones in "Wizard of Oz" and "Twister". But, like everyone else, I have seen the havoc they wreak, brought to us in living color by the TV news crews. I think that's an aspect of Mother Nature I would rather not experience.

Hurricanes -- which I did have to deal with as a cop on the East Coast -- are bad enough. And with hurricanes, you generally have sufficient notice to batten down the hatches. This was especially true in Connecticut -- we had at least 4-5 days notice, while the storm was forming down off Florida then moving up the coast.

I've seen pictures of the "Great Hurricane" of 1938.. pretty savage devastation, let me tell you. There was also one that hit Hartford in (I think) 1956 that was pretty damned vicious. I ran across a magazine special on that one. It had a picture of the house we bought in 1974... 20 years earlier, it had had some beautiful elms and maples in front, all of which were taken down by the storm. That was some impressive picture -- you could barely see our house behind all these toppled majestic trees. Hartford was clobbered, but the worst damage appeared (from the magazine, at least) to be in Rhode Island, especially Westerly (which is a city, not a general region).

This special also had a section on response to the disaster. Telephone crews from around the country (this was long before the Feds broke up the old AT&T into separate regional companies)were shown working to restore telephone service in the devastated areas. Power crews from around the country were also brought in, as were countless Red Cross nurses.

I know I talk about the Red Cross a lot, and if you're one of those who feel it is a worthless group, or if you think you'll never need them, feel free to skip the rest of this article. If, however, you accept the fact that old Mother Nature can get mightily pissed at times, or if you realize that some drunken idiot may T-bone your car sometime, you may want to finish reading this.

Remember that in many areas, the Red Cross provides the majority of blood bank services. If you get T-boned, chances are you'll need blood (or blood products). If you have friends or relatives in the Armed Forces, it's the Red Cross who can relay emergency mesages to and from your loved ones overseas. And if you get injured at work, and someone provides first aid, chances are that person learned how from the Red Cross.

And if you get hit by a tornado or hurricane, it'll be the Red Cross that shows up to provide food and shelter.

Of course, the red Cross is there in non-disaster situations too, like house fires. They have this tendency to show up and help get people squared away and back on their feet. Don't believe me? Check the newspapers for the next couple of weeks. I bet you'll see at least one story with a line like "the families displaced by the fire were provided emergency housing by the Red Cross". Or maybe you'll see "The Red Cross opened emergency shelters to assist families displaced by the tornado".

When the poo-poo hits the fan, the Red Cross will be there.

The Red Cross is completely volunteer-supported. They get no government funding (unlike Halliburton).

So if you get a chance, drop them a buck or two. Or give blood. Or -- best of all -- volunteer. There is always a need for people, not just after disasters like Katrina or 9-11. Call your local chapter or hop onto www.redcross.org.

It's always nice thinking that your donation has made someone's life a little happier. Or a little longer.

Snoopy Only Has a DOG House...

But I have a whole house.
A new way out? The escapee thinks he has found a new way to break free until he realized he was about 15 feet off the ground and left his cape in his other collar. He then thought he would attempt to enlist the aid of his friend
Angus (618 and I refere to him as Romeo and our Emily as Juliet as they so enamoured with one another)


618 Rants arrived home with them greeting him over our back door, hollered in the house for me to get out here now.These guys scard the crap out of us, but I couldn't resist grabbing the camara, we talked them back in the house but the super beagle wandered back out. We waited out side to keep them from jumping, then their mom and dad came home and brought them down stairs . All is well that ends well, and the lovepups are off to play.

Crunchin' th' Numbers

Attaturk at Rising Hegemon wants to hit 10,000,000 visitors by March 18. They're at 1.2 million today.

Hell, I'll be thrilled when I break a thousand.

Just for the hell of it, I looked at the stats from SiteMeter for some of my "competition":

Blog . . . . . . . .Avg Hits/Day . . . . Total
Atrios . . . . . . . 125,000 . . . . . . . 94,590,499
Daily Kos . . . . 601,189 . . . . . . . 319,684,223
TBogg . . . . . . . 12,006 . . . . . . . . 6,369,222

Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535


Sigh.

Though I suppose they all started small too.

Missing Person Found

No, not any of the hostages in Iraq.

One of my favorite writers, Pissed-off Patricia, formerly of BlondeSense, now has her own place, Morning Martini.

I missed her writing when she left BlondeSense. Now that I know where she is, I'll be stopping by daily for a coffee (or three).

Mission Accomplished?

I wrote a post back on January 15, quoting security expert Bruce Schneier’s reactions to the NSA spy program. (Schneier is against it, on Constitutional grounds).

Now, as we all know, preznit has pretty much flat-out admitted the program is illegal. And guess what? He doesn’t care. His sycophantic butt-buddies don’t care, either. They’re willing to give up their – and our – freedoms so that preznit can continue to protect us from terrists… just like he protected us after the August 2001 PDB (“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”), just like he protected us from Katrina.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast excerpts an article from Editor and Publisher on new attempts to deal with this mess… by making it illegal to reveal preznit’s wrongdoing (as if the boy’s ever done right?):

The draft would add to the criminal penalties for anyone who “intentionally discloses information identifying or describing” the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program or any other eavesdropping program conducted under a 1978 surveillance law.

Jill’s comment:

So this is how Republicans, even so-called “moderates” like Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel are going to deal with George W. Bush’s crimes – not just make them legal, but make anyone who dares to question the policy a criminal.

Remember how Bush used to say “They hate our freedom”? Well, we no longer have it. The terrorists have won after all. Nineteen guys with boxcutters have succeeded in turning America into a dictatorship, unaccountable to the people, unaccountable to anyone.

Mission accomplished.

I don’t think that was Bush’s goal. I say this mostly because I don’t think Bush is capable of having goals. To me, this plot to turn the US into a Fundamentalist Redneck Fourth Reich (“FR2”) bears the unmistakable stench of those two evil pricks Cheney and Rove (assisted by the lesser pricks Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, and prickette Rice).

Face it: Bush is incapable of independent thought. He’s shown that, any time he and his handler-weasels can’t control 100% of whatever environment preznit is in. He’s nothing more than Charlie McCarthy to Rove’s Edgar Bergen [if anybody is feeling like sending me an early Christm—err, holiday present, PhotoShop Rove and Bush’s faces onto a picture of Bergen and McCarthy…].

Laurence W. Britt has an article posted at Secular Humanism entitled “Fascism Anyone?” which has been excerpted, quoted, and otherwise used by just about every thinking person. The article compares the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet and identifies 14 characteristics common to those fascist regimes. Project for the Old American Century takes it one step further , by applying the points Britt identified to preznit and his cohorts. The correlation is terrifying.

Perhaps just coincidentally, a few weeks ago, one of the major bloggers (Drum, Aravosis, Marshall, Kos, or Atrios) unearthed a proposed Constitutional amendment to repeal the 22nd Amendment , which limits any person to two terms as President (which was passed as a result of FDR being elected to a fourth term). The proposed amendment was dated February 17, 2005. The sponsor of the bill, Democratic House Whip Steny Hoyer, says:

“The time has come to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, and not because of partisan politics. While I am not a supporter of the current President, I feel there are good public policy reasons for a repeal of this amendment. Under the Constitution as altered by the 22nd Amendment, this must be President George W. Bush’s last term even if the American people should want him to continue in office. This is an undemocratic result. [Emphasis added]

This proposed amendment, coupled with the GOP’s known track record of tampering with any election it can get its grubby hands on (here, here, here) would be too much of a temptation for Cheney and Rove.

Hoyer says that, under his proposal, Bush would not be eligible to run for a third term. That’s not much comfort. I can see Cheney and Rove “advising” Bush to cancel the 2008 elections – in the interests of “national security”, of course – and keeping preznit in place till the amendment passes, at which point they’re golden.

So, welcome, America, to the Fundamentalist Redneck Fourth Reich.

What does this mean for you as a citizen?

It means that we can kiss our individual freedoms goodbye:

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Religion: as long as you’re a fundamentalist Christian, you’re all set. Otherwise…
Speech: Cindy Sheehan
Press: DeWine’s bill (cited at the top of this article)
Assembly: preznit’s “free speech zones”

Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
PATRIOT Act, National Security Letters, NSA, ad nauseam.

Fifth Amendment: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment by a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Gitmo, Abu Graib, “Extraordinary Rendition”, etc.

Sixth Amendment: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informedof the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
Gitmo, Abu Graib, “Extraordinary Rendition”, etc.

Eighth Amendment: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Gitmo, Abu Graib, “Extraordinary Rendition”, etc.

Some other things going away:

Abortion: South Dakota has already passed a bill making virtually all abortions illegal; Mississippi and other states are considering similar laws.

Contraception: several writers have pointed out the “logic” of using the reversal of Roe v. Wade as the springboard for overturning the earlier – and much more pivotal – Griswold v. Connecticut.

Right to Vote: one of the Bubba Congresscritters has proposed “re-visiting” the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (sorry, I couldn’t find the link, but I’m pretty sure Kos, Atrios, Drum, or Marshall have it)

Is the situation hopeless, then?

No.

We simply have to elect someone better.

This cannot be a third-party candidate; with a few exceptions, they do not have the resources to battle the current two-party structure. This means NO NADER. Nader has pissed off too many people to have even the remotest chance at winning.

We must force the Democratic Party to nominate someone who can win. This means NO HILLARY, for the same reason Nader isn’t acceptable. NO KENNEDY, NO GORE, ditto.

We must nominate and elect someone who can provide a clear, logical, and concise alternative to the Republicans. Therefore, NO KERRY.

We must elect someone who is not a “Republican-lite”… NO LIEBERMAN.

I’m not sure who this leaves. Obama? I haven’t been too impressed with his performance since he hit DC. Murtha? Too old, and probably too smart to run. Bill Clinton? Give me a break… do we want to go through that again?

All I know is we have to find somebody.

UPDATE: Fixed the broken links (I hope), and corrected an unintentional Spoonerism (as opposed to an intentional one, I suppose) with Steny Hoyer's name.