I have had to distance myself a little from U.S. politics, just to keep my sanity. Every time I think the administration has reached it’s nadir, they find ways to keep digging. So, now Condi is the Secretary of State, and with almost no real resistance. Sigh. At least Senator Dodd called her out a bit. (You can see the… Read more →
Category: Political
Emptying the hump of hate, Part II
I wanted to rant a bit about the grotesque spectacle of the Bush’s inauguration celebrations, but Dan Gilmour beat me to it: The spectacle of George W. Bush and his friends celebrating (Reuters) his election so expensively this week is one of those revealing moments in history. The announced spending of $40 million just on the parties is undoubtedly less… Read more →
Banjos playing through the broken glass
OK, time to unload some stuff from the hump of hate. Remember when I was openly mocking Alabama earlier? Well, they are trying to make me angrier: Roy Moore choice of GOP voters. Roy Moore’s defiance of a court order cost him the state’s highest judicial office. But his fame as the Ten Commandments judge could make the former Supreme… Read more →
5500!
According to an article in the Telegraph (which I got via Daily Kos), there have been 5500 desertions from the US military around the Iraq War. The implication of the article is that these deserters have come to Canada. How have I not heard of this, if it’s true? The media has covered a couple of high profile cases, but… Read more →
Another small glimpse of hope
You may recall quite a lot of earlier discussion here (start here and follow links backwards for other posts) about Cobb Country, GA, and their “evolution is just a theory” sticker on textbooks. Well, the case has been settled in federal court, and with a result that gives me another small bit of hope. Here’s a bit of the judge’s… Read more →
You mean they didn’t find any?
I was going to comment on this CNN article, but I think Brian Wood has said everything I was going to say, and probably more succinctly at his LJ: wtf? U.S. ends search for WMD in Iraq “The search ended almost two years after President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, citing concerns that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of… Read more →
Do you know the word ‘crapweasel’, Tom?
So, let’s look at the latest Delay news. First, the other shoe has already started dropping with regards to that little moment of optimism I had the other day. While it is true that “the Delay rule” was revoked, apparently the Republicans still managed to push through ethics changes that will make future probes much more difficult. Here’s a snippet… Read more →
Bill “McCarthy” Gates
So, Bill Gates apparently thinks that people with different notions of intellectual property from him are commies. This kind of bounces off of me, since as a Canadian I am considered a crypto-communist by most Americans anyway, and as a leftist NDP I’m considered a bit of a communist by lots of Canadians too, but it’s a less frivolous matter… Read more →
Good News?
Wow, finally some good news. I’ve been kind of avoid political news since that Black Day in November, because it was just too miserable to face, but here are some stories that show me a little ray of hope. (Of course, the cynic in me says this is just because the crush will be that much worse after a gleam… Read more →
Start reading the top IP law blogs in less than five minutes
One of the areas of interest to me as a concerned liberal is the area of intellectual property–I am concerned about copyright extension and the erosion of the public domain, I’m concerned about software patents and the stifiling of innovation, and I’m perhaps most generally concerned about the way our various governments seem to put the short term economic good… Read more →
Making Light Of Gerald Allen
I was getting pretty depressed about the whole Gerald Allen story (which I had previously commented on) and then I read Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s take on the piece. She skewers him so thoroughly that I felt immensely better. (Later on, of course, when I start wondering why the mass of Americans, and the Administration in particular, doesn’t see what she… Read more →
Do you not understand how this looks to the rest of the world?
I just spent a week in Boston. While there I read the Globe. And I saw this article about the plans to return people to Fallujah now that the “insurrection” is over. Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing… Read more →
Krugman strikes again
Once again Paul Krugman looks at an issue that has had a lot of spin put on it (and surely has a lot more to come) and lays out the facts clearly. But it’s a problem of modest size. The report finds that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd century, with no change in benefits, would… Read more →
Irony Overload
Gay book ban goal of state lawmaker “Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle,” Allen said in a press conference Tuesday. Well, he gets one thing right. Can the universe please stop with the irony now? Read more →
US Currency Part N+1
Continuing the trend of looking at the weakening US dollar, we’ve got a couple of new articles. First, an analysis post from Kitco, a gold bullion dealer, looks at the potential effects of Japan and China cutting back on, or dropping their support for the US dollar. For a while now the US has been pressuring China to let its… Read more →
