Just a quick list of things that the U.S. are doing that are making me righteously angry (a subset of the full list of things that are making me righteously angry): An utterly forseeable consequence. It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of insight to grasp that an organizational hierarchy will develop a need to justify itself, and its budget. It’s… Read more →
Category: Political
Friendly Dictators
Back in 1989 Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated a deck of cards designed to bring to light some of the sleazier folks that the U.S. government had done deals with. The text on each card was written by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell. I wish there was an updated version covering the last 17 years, but in the meantime I’ve prepared a… Read more →
Saturday Miscellany
OK, let’s see if we can close a whole bunch of tabs on my desktop, and maybe bring something interesting to you at the same time. Hollywood might have some cool special effects, but Nature can really create a 60km long rift! One that threatens to carve out a new ocean. Damn that’s cool in a “can you imagine the… Read more →
Go SCOTUS
This post made possible by the New Medievalism research team. I was pretty surprised today at the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Hamadan–I honestly didn’t expect this court to deny Bush anything, much less make a decent ruling. Here’s a snippet from the AP story: Supreme Court blocks Bush, Gitmo war trials WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that… Read more →
Bipolar linking
Chris is Angry: “Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely“. Almost nothing in “rights” legality angers me more than divisions between the rights of humans and the rights of citizens. The judge here, and anyone who agrees with him should learn a little history. The line was “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all… Read more →
Markup Languages & Politics
Because one of my job roles is keeping on eye on some markup language specifications that are relevant to our product line (hell, I even helped author the initial version of one of the ones that’s important to us). Mostly this means I have to occasionally subject myself to incredibly boring markup minutiae, but sometimes it means I get to… Read more →
The wilder their claims, the more the debate shifts right…
Okay, let’s review. First, three prisoners at Guantamao commit suicide. Then the camp commander of the camp, Read Adm Harris, where this happened is quoted as saying this suicide is “an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us“. Then we have the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, who we could perhaps assume might actually be, you know,… Read more →
Holy @#$%
It’s a truism in Canada that socialised medicine is just better than the American system, except among rabid neocons. (Actually the truism is a bit more nuanced, but certainly the perception is that the average person is much better off here…) Every once in a while you hear a story about some family in the U.S. without insurance that are… Read more →
Specter’s compromised.
Specter’s compromise: “You can have everything you wanted, Emporer Bush, sir.” Specter Offers Compromise on NSA Surveillance The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has proposed legislation that would give President Bush the option of seeking a warrant from a special court for an electronic surveillance program such as the one being conducted by the National Security Agency. […] Another… Read more →
Quickies
Darwin strikes again: Kung fu fan tries to stop train. I swear I am totally going to learn how to pronounce “Xianglongshibazhang!”, and I am totally going to yell it out whenever I see someone being unutterably stupid. Ha-ha: Roy Moore Loses. Not a judge anymore, not a governor either. Apparently even in Alabama there’s some people who can’t get… Read more →
Things that are pissing me off today
Well, Heather Reisman, the CEO of Canada’s nigh monopolistic corporate bookstore chain is marking up our country with her censor’s marker again. You might remember that in the past she’s banned such things as Mein Kampf (although, amusingly, not the “sequel“), books by famous whack-job David Icke, and gun magazines. None of them things I have any interest in reading,… Read more →
Schneier: The Eternal Value of Privacy
At this point it should be firmly established that Bruce Schneier is like unto a god among my people. His essay, The Eternal Value of Privacy, which showed up on Wired News yesterday, only does more to cement his position in the firmament. Here’s the closing three paragraphs from the piece, but do go read it all–it’s only a page.… Read more →
So that’s the 31% who still approve
Someone to claim us, someone to follow Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo Someone to fool us, someone like you We want you Big Brother, Big Brother Illegal taps of US phone calls. Check. Secret compilation of the phone records of Americans. Check. Using this secret data to intimidate investigators and political opponents, while forwarding personal and political agendas… Read more →
Can we start calling this a disapproval rating yet?
Steve Ruggles at University of Minnesota has prepared a lovely historical chart of Bush’s approval rating over time, as reported by a variety of sources. There’s a pretty clear trend here. Cynical Chris wishes he could believe that this represents a rejection of the policies of the administration by the public, and not irritation at gas prices… (I’ve captured a… Read more →
46% of Americans “not too bright”
So, just to review: Adminstration fabricates evidence and knowingly misleads the country into a way: OK Administration tramples civil rights several ways: That’s fine Administration’s crazy war kills 1000s of Americans and 1000000s of brown people: No problem Supposedly ‘conservative’ Administration cuts taxes and raises spending to result in record deficits even though they started with record surplus: Sure Administration… Read more →
