Willie (the one that inhales)

Watch Willie Nelson play some songs and talk politics

Pack Your Bags

The time has long passed for you to go home. The only thing that you're accomplishing by sticking around is making yourself look bad, actually since you already looked bad I should say worse. You're trying to make your opponent look bad too but it seems to be backfiring. Sure there are a few people still on your side, but you have only came as far as you have so far because you had so much money at the start from your business friends, that you were declared the front-runner before a single vote was cast. Your friends in the media are trying to keep you propped up as well, though there have been some defectors.

Your sense of entitlement as if it were meant to be yours has kept you in the race much longer than you should have been. If you do manage to weasel your way onto the ticket somehow as VP or with superdelegates or the Florida and Michigan delegates you will only make it that much harder for the Democratic ticket to win. As you have said before, you think that should be the most important thing. It's largely due to you that this has happened. Thanks a lot. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it ends up as you and McCain. In a contest between two pro-war hawks, Nader might come up with a respectable showing and bring a third party closer to legitimacy. But that's not likely to be the case.

You inundate us with talk of your experience, but with the exception of being married to the former president, what is the difference? You have been in the Senate a little bit longer, but what you did there is not something I would brag about. You supported the war up until you decided to run for president and you were with Bush much more than you were ever against him. You didn't even bother to show up to vote on the telco immunity. You voted for the Iraq war, you hyped WMD and terrorism links, you ardently stood by Bush until you had to change to have any hope of getting past the primaries.

Please, please, pack your bags and go home.

We survived

The "Protect America Act" expired Saturday night, which according to Bush would open up dangerous gaps in our intelligence. After spending Saturday night in the fetal position under my bed, the Sun came up on Sunday and I was still alive!

Congress didn't pass a multi-year renewal on the act, mainly due to disagreement on whether on not to include retroactive amnesty for telco companies. Bush promised to veto any bill that didn't include it, and he also promised to veto any further temporary extensions. The line repeated by Bush and republicans was that the time for debating is over and congress needed to pass the bill immediately. The sudden urgency just happened to be when for the first time, the senate passed a bill that included the retroactive amnesty. Before then, there was time to debate and temporary extensions were fine. Once a bill got passed that had telco immunity in it, suddenly talk time is over and it is imperative that the bill be finalized.

Then the fear-mongering started. Congress must act or else the terrorists will kill us all.

Republicans in the House walked out over the issue.

Telco companies, under existing law, are required to give the government help with any lawful request for surveillance. Why they need amnesty for complying with legal requests confuses my simple little mind. Should they get amnesty if the cooperated with illegal surveillance? It would be a safe bet the the people who ran the illegal surveillance would want them to, otherwise details about what was done might come out. Oh yeah, and if that happened the terrorists will win because they will know that we only conduct legal spying.

The house passed a similar bill a while ago, but it didn't include amnesty, and went home for a while without passing a new one that includes the amnesty. Look forward to some high pressure bullying from Bush in the weeks to come.

A few senators worked to keep the retroactive immunity out, like Feingold and Chriss Dodd. A lot didn't though.

Countdown did a good piece on it this week. If you look here they have been tracking the story as it progressed as well.

I've got Worms

To get a leg up on malicious internet viruses, microsoft wants to release what it might describe as benevolent internet worms. They felt that whole process of people voluntarily putting software updates on their pc was just to cumbersome.

no-brainer

I had been meaning to do a post on some torture related things bust partly due to mother nature A Daily Show beat me to it (the video is below). For the first time the Bush admin publicly admitted it waterboarded some people, and may decide to do it again. There's been a little bit of a publicity blitz because if they don't convince everyone that it was legal then the US might have trouble with getting evidence allowed in the death sentence charges for evildoing. Ironically, the State Dept. sent out a memo to all embassies instructing them to compare these cases to the Nuremburg Trials, Trials where one of the main crimes the Nazis were charged with was starting war(s) of aggression. A memorable quote from the chief US prosecutor at those trials:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole

Dick Cheney even personally made an appearance this week in support of legalized waterboarding. You may remember him from such comments as:



This is what the guy on Fox News that is Steve Doocy had to say:



Bill O'Reilly wants to tell the candidates that waterboarding works.

Flotsam

See the giant plastic island of detritus.

Memories

All the recent talk of Reagan in the GOP seems to be creating lot's of 80's nostalgia. It got me thinking back to my first love...it was my first exposure to this exciting new world that was quickly building. Sure I have moved on to bigger and better things, but something about the first one stays special. We would spend hours in my parent's basement, just the two of us. Sure it was awkward at first, but it got better and better once you learned each other's language. At first there was no communication, just sitting there blankly blinking not knowing what to say. First it was just a few words; run, goto, PR#6, But eventually I was running Karateka, Conan, Wolfenstein, Lemonade stand, the best that 7" monochrome had to offer. It was an Apple IIc, and this week I've seen one or two people write about it.