Five Before Chaos

The more things change, the more they stay the same. CNN is now reporting:

Congressional Democrats plan to send to President Bush a war-spending bill without a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, two Democratic leadership aides tell CNN…

The bill is expected to include benchmarks that the Iraqi government would have to achieve. The bill is also expected to require the president to provide numerous reports to Congress before August 2007 on the Iraqi government’s progress, the aides said.

If the Iraqi government fails to meet the benchmarks, the aides said, reconstruction funds could be cut. The bill may also allow the president to waive the penalties for failing to meet the benchmarks if he feels they are necessary.

So Bush gets the money, and he can ignore the benchmarks. Perhaps they can add an amendment that lets him use Pelosi as a footstool, too. Pelosi has said she will not support the supplemental bill. Mr. 28% looked at them and they’ve apparently blinked.

It seems as though that spine transplant that some thought the Dems had gotten turned out to be just a few vertebrae. Doctors now report that those few vertebrae actually have several herniated disks.

So, what now? You can start by calling Peter Welch’s office at (888) 605-7270 (in VT) or (202)225-4115 (in DC) and letting him know what you think. If Welch is serious about ending the war (and let’s not turn this into yet another impeachment thread, please), this is most definitely a make-or-break moment. Make sure he knows that.

And, no, I’m not saying most Xtians are like this, so lighten up.

Police arrested a man who was going to apparently attack protestors at Jerry Falwell’s funeral… with some homemade half-assed napalm. So does this mean we’re now allowed to use the term “Christian terrorists”, or is that label still reserved for the ones who kneel on the carpets facing Mecca?

Funniest line is at the end, though… “No national Republicans attended Tuesday’s funeral, including none of the GOP presidential candidates. All said they were too busy.” Uh-huh. This man was like a toxic fungus.

Whoa, now this is scary. CNet is reporting that Dead Man Walking A.G. “Speedy” Gonzales is proposing yet another law designed to infringe on your privacy and possibly throw you in jail – for “attempting” piracy. And if you look at the new abuses it allows, you might as well be guilty of breathing, too:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy…

The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy.

This law would:

• Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright.
• Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software (in certain situations, but who knows?)
• Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
• Allow computers to be seized more readily.
• Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anticircumvention regulations.
• Add penalties for “intended” copyright crimes.
• Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America.

Now it will be interesting to see how this goes. Gonzales is obviously on many senator and congresspeople’s shit list (as well as the general population’s, of course), but the recording industry also fees the pigs at the trough quite well, as you know. And of course the authoritarian pants-poopers are going to say “if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about”. Yeah, right. Anyways, check out the article. If I hear more on this I’ll keep y’all posted.

Lots o’ good stuff at Popcorn and Sticky Floors right now…

And for you Italian film buffs, have a gander at a tribute site to one of the sexiest women to ever walk the face of the earth: Claudia Cardinale, star of Fellini’s ’8 1/2′, and the greatest Spaghetti Western ever made, Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in the West”.

Aw, hell, here’s one more… it’s not every day you come to FBC and see this kind of stuff, right?

This time, from his wife…

From a family (grandmother, mother, me and now my husband Dennis) of Librans, the symbol for which is the scales, my mother and I always joked that we spent our lives in constant flux in search of balance but rarely finding it. Librans, in this constant seeking for justice, appreciate fully moments of beauty and opportunity in every experience that allude to balance and justice.

It is said in physics that every action causes a reaction. Similar too is the concept of Karma. These can be understood to be the material and spiritual laws of balance. When they are translated into our day to day life experiences, every action indeed causes a reaction, a karmic narrative. To awaken vision and to touch balance in Justice’s scales, we must introduce sincere reflection between the phases of action and reaction.

Astrology… eecchh. Wasn’t Reagan into that? Time for a reality check. I still think this is why a lot of VT’ers find him appealing.

Welcome to Pottersville has a great Frank Rich piece today about the symbolic importance of Jerry Falwell’s death:

Though Mr. Falwell had long been an embarrassment and laughingstock to many, including a new generation of Christian leaders typified by Mr. Kuo, the timing of his death could not have had grander symbolic import. It happened at the precise moment that the Falwell-Robertson brand of religious politics is being given its walking papers by a large chunk of the political party the Christian right once helped to grow. Hours after Mr. Falwell died, Rudy Giuliani, a candidate he explicitly rejected, won the Republican debate by acclamation. When the marginal candidate Ron Paul handed “America’s mayor” an opening to wrap himself grandiloquently in 9/11 once more, not even the most conservative of Deep South audiences could resist cheering him. If Rudy can dress up as Jack Bauer, who cares about his penchant for drag?

Wasn’t the MSM coverage of Falwell’s passing kind of funny? Aside from from the obvious nutjobs, people were struggling to say something, anything nice about the departed Christofascist gasbag. Continue reading

New Scientist has a fantastic guide to help you debunk the Kool-Aid drinkers known as global warming deniers and apologists (not to be confused with Krazy Kristian Kultists, the other major variety of American Kool-Aid drinkers). It covers all of ‘em, the “conspiracies”, the “we can’t do anything about it” excuse, the “many leading scientists question it” b.s., you name it. Have a look.

crossposted at Green Mountain Daily.

You may remember a few weeks ago, I wrote about the new farm bill, more specifically how the subsidies for Big Corn and Soy make it so the least healthiest foods are the cheapest, and how this ties into our nation’s poorest people having problems with obesity and other diet-related problems. In keeping with that theme, have a look over at this piece at Tom Paine, where it talks about how four members of Congress tried to live on $21 of food per week, the average weekly food stamp allotment. It’s not pretty, and once again, it puts the problems of the nutritional challenges that the poor in this nation have to face:

“No organic foods, no fresh vegetables, we were looking for the cheapest of everything,” McGovern said in an interview with The Washington Post at a Washington supermarket. “We got spaghetti and hamburger meat that was high in fat—the fattiest meat on the shelf. I have high cholesterol and always try to get the leanest, but it’s expensive. It’s almost impossible to make healthy choices on a food stamp diet.”

It does not help that some of the cost estimates of the USDA recommended meals seem out of date. A chili recipe that calls for three-quarters of a pound of ground beef, beans, celery, onions and seasonings is priced at $3.87 for four servings. But the lowest-priced ground beef, with 20 percent fat, was selling this week for between $2.99 and $3.59 a pound at two major Washington supermarkets.

After about three days on their food stamp diet, Lisa McGovern wrote, “We’ve been eating so minimally—concerned that we won’t have enough food to carry us through to Tuesday. I can see an impact on our energy levels, even in just these few days. When Jim got home around 10 last night, he just seemed a little ‘flat.’ He’s usually very animated when recapping his work day, whether it was good or bad. But the lack of fuel seemed to drain that from him a bit.”

It goes without saying that it’s sickening that we have billions of dollars for unnecessary wars and tax breaks for polluters, when there are people struggling to put food in their mouths. I guess it just says a lot about our priorities as a nation. You can also read one of the congresspeople’s blog about the experience here.

Interview with a surprisingly mellow Bernie in the Washington Post today.

My regular readers probably know I’m no Christopher Hitchens fan. He’s one of the few columnists in Free Inquiry magazine that I don’t think belong there. But anyways, have a look at Hitchens in a rare sober moment has he talks about the recently departed (and not at all missed by tolerant, rational people around the world) Jerry Fallwell. He nails it down quite well as to what the man was all about and the sheel idiocy in this country of deeming anyone with a holy title in front of their name worthy of respect, whether worthy or not. Watch it: